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The Counterfeiters [2007] | ![The Counterfeiters [2007]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51CxYH3q5VL._SL75_.jpg)
 enlarge | Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky
Actors: August Diehl, Dolores Chapli, Devid Strieso, Karl Markovic, Martin Brambach
Studio: Metrodome Distribution
Category: DVD
List Price: £19.99
Buy New: £5.68
You Save: £14.31 (72%)
New (26) Used (5) from £4.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 855
Format: Pal
Language: German (Unknown)
Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 95
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.3 x 0.7
EAN: 5055002553639
ASIN: B0012RCM1U
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Release Date: March 17, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New - Swift dispatch from UK mainland
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Not for nothing did Stefan Ruzowitzky's powerful film The Counterfeiters walk away with the Best Foreign Picture Oscar at the 2008 Academy Awards. And like the previous year's winner of the prize--the equally superb The Lives Of Others--there are some tough decisions for certain German citizens at the heart of it. The Counterfeiters, though, is set in West Germany in 1936. It tells the true story of history's biggest ever counterfeiting operation, set up by the Nazis. The mission? To forge foreign currency. And the king of counterfeiters proves to be Salomon Soroswitch, also known as Sally, who ultimately has to face the dilemma of what to do when he realises that his work is helping to fuel war. There are so many reasons to commend The Counterfeiters that it's tricky to know where to start. The cast, for instance, is uniformly excellent, and you could rightly wonder why Oscar overlooked both August Diehl and Karl Markovics for nominations. What's more, it's also stunningly, and very intelligently, directed, ratcheting up at times the kind of tension that hundreds of films try and fail to match every year. Married up to a script of three dimensional characters and historical reverence, it's a quite brilliant package, and one that stays with you long after the credits have rolled. The Counterfeiters is a very different film to The Lives Of Others, but both expertly reflect the dilemmas that individuals had to face in different parts of Germany, albeit some four or five decades apart. Both are exceptional pieces of cinema, though, and for the purposes of this particular review, The Counterfeiters deserves its Oscar, deserves its worldwide praise, and deserves to be part of your DVD collection. Don't miss it. --Jon Foster
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
Subtitles alone cost this outstanding film a star July 14, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is an excellent film of the 'too much effort to critique' variety. However, I could find no mention on the DVD packaging nor on a quick perusal of this site that the soundtrack is in German with English subtitles (as is The Lives Of Others to which it is compared in Amazon's own review). If this matters to you, then you should be aware of the fact. Personally I find subtitles in this type of film a mixed blessing: yes it is authentic but even topping up a wine glass risks missing a crucial piece of dialogue. Moreover, while film snobs may sneer, the reality is that people do not communicate by holding up cards with their words written on them. There is a small cost to subtitles and I deduct a star only because of it. If subtitles really do not matter to you, then please add one back on.
 Excellent Film, Gripping and Thought Provoking July 8, 2008
I thought this was a really gripping film and one that raised more complex ethical questions than is usual in this context.
The story centres on two central characters who are part of a group of prisoners in a concentration camp chosen by the Nazis to carry out a counterfeiting operation which could go far to aiding the Nazi war effort.
Burger is an idealistic communist, willing to sabotage the operation and sacrifice his life for his principles, unfortunately this would also mean sacrificing the lives of the others in the group. 'Solly' on the other hand is a criminal, a master counterfeiter whose pragmatism has ensured his survival throughout the war and before. He walks a tightrope between self preservation and honour towards his fellow inmates. He does not have the black and white outlook of Burger and sees partial coersion with the Nazis as the best way to preserve his life and the lives of the other prisoners in his group. He is a complex and interesting character suberbly played by Markovics. In fact all the acting in this film is excellent. Overall the film manages to operate both as a tense, involving drama and one that raises an interesting debate about what would be 'the right thing to do' in such harrowing circumstances. Highly recommended.
Worthy of our attention May 10, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This Holocaust film falls short of the power of Schlinder's List, but it is an interesting story with credible acting and an intelligent script. The concentration guards looked authentic and the main protagonist (excellently played by Karl Markovics) is a reassuringly flawed character, rather than a predictable inscrutable hero.
It is hard to avoid comparing this Germanic film with other recent gems such as Downfall and The Lives of Others, which I felt were better. Nevertheless, it is a worthy attempt at reminding us of the ghastly evil that was Nazi Germany and no doubt deserved its Oscar.
 Unrealistic March 25, 2008
5 out of 15 found this review helpful
The film fictionalises Operation Bernhard. A plan hatched by the Nazis was to destabilise the United Kingdom by flooding its economy with forged Bank of England currency. The movie is based on a memoir written by Adolf Burger a Jewish Slovak typographer interned for forging baptismal certificates.
I have found the film in part badly acted, and that makes it seem unrealistic - despite the theme it deals with. I must concur with some criticism it has drawn from reviewers in other countries. One should not overlook its shortcomings from an acting and editing point, just because it deals with an aspect of the Holocaust.
Particularly irritating was the rather intrusive and detractice music which did not underline the action.
Pounds March 3, 2008
16 out of 18 found this review helpful
The New Germany and Austria by extension have been in the process, these past several years, of divesting themselves of National Guilt in regards to the atrocities of World War 2: "Sophie Scholl," "Downfall" and also the superb "Lives of Others" (though set in post WWII East Berlin, it reeks of submission and totalitarianism) speak to the redemptive qualities of confession and penance.
And now we have "The Counterfeiters," the story of Solomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a Russian-born Jew who spends his life forging documents thereby attaining the reputation of a master counterfeiter. Ultimately he is arrested and sent to a Camp at which he is given the assignment of forging the British Pound note for The Third Reich. This is 1945 and the disastrous German War effort is in dire need of cash to carry on its war effort.
"Counterfeiters" is all about survival and to what means we, as human beings will do to comply in order to live: anything pretty much sums it up and anything pretty much is the reality of our collective desire to live despite the cicumstances.
Director Stefan Ruzowitzky is walking a slippery slope here as the counterfeiting was done in the Nazi concentration camp at Sachsenhausen and the technicians involved were almost all Jews, "The Counterfeiters" raises some provocative moral dilemmas.
Also, the Sorowitsch of Markovics is no paragon of honor. Instead he is a squirrelly, only thinking for himself, con man. He's happy to do what the Nazi's ask of him in order to get the perks of his "exalted position" in Sachsenhausen: clean clothes, good food, soft bedding, and weekly hot showers. "The Counterfeiters" begins with a post war sequence of Sorowitsch spending thousands of counterfeit British Pounds in Monte Carlo: gambling, grooming himself, dining, dating...basically enjoying the fruits of his labors and those of his fellow counterfeiters.
Sorowitsch is one who feels that: "Only by surviving can we defeat them."
"The Counterfeiters" is a difficult film to like but ultimately it speaks to something in all of us: the drive, the desperate need to survive despite the circumstances in which we might find ourselves. Sorowitsch is flawed, a nasty piece of work actually but he's intelligent, crafty and grudgingly and ultimately deserving of our respect.
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