Watching a dubbed version is better than no version at all (but only just)

I watched John Woo's The Killer for the first time the other day. I'd seen the film at least a dozen times since I first stumbled across it at Video Ezy in Timaru 1992, but it was always the dubbed version. This week, I watched it in the original audio soundtrack, subtitles and all.

It was obviously excellent - The Killer is an amazing movie, full of breathtaking stuntwork and deep male camaraderie in the middle of blazing gunfights - but hearing the real dialogue come from Chow Yun-fat and Danny Lee, instead of some poor American voice artist fake-chuckling about Mickey Mouse, was a true delight.

It's a contemporary problem. I've been catching up on my international cinema, which usually means watching a bunch of horror films made five years ago. And for reasons far too dumb to go into here, I had to watch them in dubbed version, and the job done was so bad and just so half-arsed, I feel like I haven't seen the real thing

There are always inadvertent jokes in mistranslations and the small differences in cultural practice, but it's the performances that are cut off at the knees, you can see the pain, desperation and love on the faces of the people you're watching, but you're not hearing it..

It's better than nothing, but it's still not the proper film. You're getting the ease of translation, but you're missing an important part of the package in the name of this awful convenience. 

I need to go the extra effort to track down the Train to Busan films and The Wailing, because I've seen how they go down, but I haven't heard them properly yet.