I think that if the movie is specifically about a certain country and culture, then all the actors should try their best to do the appropriate accent. Learn to do a mild simple version of the accent at least. Even Dick Van Dyke's Bert accent wasn't that bad, it was amusing.

The one thing that annoyed me the most about the movie "Alexander" about Alexander the Great, was the wrong accents. This is a movie about one of the most famous Greeks ever and takes place in Greece. And yet not a single person in the movie had a Greek accent, and in fact no two people had the same accent. Each actor used his natural accent, which totally threw off the mood. There was one outrageous Scottish accent that was crazy.

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I agree with you, if the actors are portraying a specific culture they should do their best to copy that accent. Haven't seen Alexander, but in Hunt For Red October their accents drove me nuts.

For those who haven't seen the film in the beginning the actors are on a Russian submarine and all of them SPEAK Russian, accent included. Then at one point the camera zooms in and Sam Neill switches mid-sentence from Russian to English. (The exact same shot/action was done in Judgment at Nuremberg where the actors spoke German til the switch)

Anyhow, what drove me nuts about this great film is that post-language switch all the actors playing Russians spoke with their normal accents--Sean Connery, Tim Curry et al. except Sam Neill--he was the only one who used a Russian accent. You've got a Russian sub captain who's suddenly from Scotland. At least in Nuremberg the actors kept up the German accents, no matter how poorly of a job they did at it. I'm looking at you Burt Lancaster!

Now that I've written all this it occurs to me watching those two films would give an insight as to which is more appealing or if it matters all that much; keeping the accent, ala Judgment, or just drop it altogether as they did in Red October.

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A few thoughts on this:
1. Why the hell didn't they just hire a damn Brit?!?
2. He/she is playing a role, as are the other actors. In that, no one is being their true selves, therefore faking the accent is simply a part of acting. If they do it poorly, its much the same as them acting poorly--see Keanu Reeves.
3. If they actor cannot fake it convincingly why don't they just toss a quick line in the script to explain it ala Mos Def in Hitchhikers'? Arthur mentions it at the bar.

None of this helped you, did it?

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I dunno. Or like when an actor from another country does an American accent.

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