Sadly, I’m not talking about the 1956 version. No, I clicked on a random Netflix title, and I got a French action film that somehow passed the audio description quotient at Netflix. i don’t understand why I can see this with audio description, but Oscar nominees Roma, Bardo, and El Conde all lacked audio description. Three filmmakers whose content I’m actually interested in, and this random terrorist thriller got audio description.
To be fair, it got AI audio description. And while I might have mistaken some human voices as AI in the past, I will not budge. This is not a human. This is AI. And there was no quality check. I think when these companies turn to AI/TTS (Text To Speech), they assume the finished product must be good, and because of cost-cutting measures they just shit all over blind people with their nonsense. To the millionaire executives out there supporting this TTS model, you still need to pay someone to quality check the AI. Would you type something into Chat GBT and then take whatever it spat out, and send that off to your boss? your mom? Wife? I’ve seen some really incorrect responses, and some that made no sense.
Dead giveaway was “Grenada Launcher”, pronounced with the “ah” sound at the end. A human knows what a grenade is. And they know how to say it. but, like the screen readers we blind people use, AI reads what it is given. So, if someone didn’t type correctly when composing the script, then the AI doesn’t know to fix it. You could just write an Ai audio description track that is nothing but curse words, and because there’s no quality check, it could be up for a hot minute before getting taken down.
However, I did not come here to just shit on this film. it’s not a good film, so don’t expect that. They have some of the dumbest scenes in this thing, but we also make dumb American action films. This plays out like the lost Expendables sequel that never happened. But, I honestly didn’t know this was French. I clicked on it because it was trending in the Top 10, and had audio description. I thought it would have someone in it, but it took me a while to realize this cast was dubbed. For films like this, there’s an acceptable level of bad acting anyway, and this cast actually did a good job with the voice work. The other thing is, of all the TTS/AI voices I’ve heard, this is by far the most acceptable one. There are some truly awful TTS voices out there, and honestly some really dull narrators who bring nothing to their roles. But, this is not one of those films.
But yeah, this film isn’t worth anyone’s time. But I do love seeing international content with audio description.
FINAL GRADE: D-
