Credits

subject:

Roderick Taylor, Bruce A. Taylor

screenplay:

Roderick Taylor, Bruce A. Taylor Cynthia Mort

direction:

Neil Jordan

produced by

Village Roadshow Pictures, Silver Pictures, Redemption Pictures

distributed by:

Warner Bros. Italia

Italian dialogues:

Maura Vespini

Dubbing direction:

Maura Vespini

Dubbing assistant:

Paola Speranza

Dubbing sound technician:

Giovanbattista Mariani

Sound mixer:

Roberto Moroni

Italian dubbing:

CVD

sound:

Technicolor Sound Services

Voices:

Jodie Foster:

Laura Boccanera

Terrence Howard:

Sandro Acerbo

Nicky Katt:

Franco Mannella

Mary Steenburgen:

Franca D'Amato

Ene Oloja:

Emanuela Baroni

Victor Colicchio:

Stefano De Sando

Gordon Macdonald:

Loris Loddi

Italian dialogue				0,5
Dubbing direction				0

The Brave One
Australia/Usa 2007

New York shoots, the police is useless and city fear forces Jodie Foster into the role of vigilante of the night and we miss good, old Charles Bronson, with whom we were at least spared all the meditation and pondering.

As far as the Italian version is concerned, mediocre dubbings unfortunately have already been heard before but here we’re in a free-talking/words at random atmosphere. Let me begin precisely from the star’s spoken thoughts: perhaps in the original version they had a meaning but in Italian we are perplexed to hear someone who is a radio broadcasting journalist say such senseless things like «non riesci a tornare a essere la stessa nello stesso luogo», (you can’t go back to being the same person in the same place) «ho tante storie nei miei file» (I’ve got a lot of stories in my file) or, crème de la crème, the best of all «i palazzi spuntano come cromosomi sul DNA delle strade» (buildings come up like chromosomes in the road’s DNA).

But the film is an anthology of absurdities. So as to avoid that my accusations remain in mid-air I return here to my notes: the policeman finds a body and exclaims: «a ridere è di nuovo lui» (he’s laughing again); the same policeman, addresses a drug-trafficker, accusing him: «Lei ingaggia i suoi avvocati e fa la sua parte» (you hire the lawyers and do your bit) and to his ex-wife, asking her to intervene in the juvenile court on the guardianship of the drug-trafficker’s step-daughter: «ti chiedo solamente di agire per suo conto» (I’m only asking you to act on her behalf) (I understand here that he meant to say in her interest); the policeman again, in analysing the scene of the crime: «è andato a segno solo uno dei tre bossoli» (only one out of three bullets hit the spot); and, dulcis in fundo, in describing the bad guy mentioned above: «importa armi, droga, persone. Sta sul mercato» (he imports weapons, drugs, people: he’s on the market) (here again I managed to understand it by myself: it’s a misunderstanding on the word “deal”. We’ve reached translation errors here). But the policeman isn’t the only one who makes mistakes: a man in an evident state of violent confusion has just shot his wife; Foster is involuntarily witness to the murder, but the man notices her presence and looks for her through the supermarket shelves in order to kill her and cannot say «ti sento respirare» (I can hear you breathe), unless they want us to believe he’s a maniac. Furthermore, in the finale of the film, the policeman creates a scene of a bust-up with the band of thugs and asks Foster to shoot him but only grazing or scraping him to make the whole thing more real. And she, trembling, says: «Le mie mani tremano» (My hands are shaking). Amazing.

I hint, en passant, to the fact that the adaptor didn’t force himself to solve the word game between “Radiohead” and “gimme the head”, which he translates with «Vuoi darmi i Radiohead anche tu?» (you want to give me Radiohead too?) annihilating the vulgar, double sense and reaching tragedy when defining this mystery character who goes around all night cleaning up the city of its criminals as “vigilante”. Now, it’s obvious to everyone (apart from, evidently, the adaptor) that vigilante means “giustiziere” (justice-doer). Otherwise we expect them to arrest a night-time security guard gone mad.

Regarding the direction, frankly I thought that the director hadn’t read the script until I discovered that he’d actually written it. Not to mention that half of the lines’ intentions are wrong so much so that even Boccanera (who has always dubbed Foster) seems inadequate and that the dialogues between two people – a miracle of separate column dubbing – remind us in parts of Beckett, at least Foster and her fiancé alternately calling the dog with a different pronunciation could have been avoided.

[original review in Italian by Giovanni Rampazzo]