Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Sony
EAN: 0043396239203
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Sony Pictures
Languages: GermanOriginal LanguageEnglishUnknownEnglishSubtitledFrenchSubtitledSpanishSubtitledFrenchDubbed
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
MPN: COLD23920D
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Region Code: 99
Release Date: August 05, 2008
Running Time: 99 minutes
Studio: Sony Pictures
Theatrical Release Date: February 22, 2008

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 08/05/2008 Run time: 99 minutes Rating: R

Amazon.com:
A deft blend of suspense and docudrama, Stefan Ruzowitzky's sixth feature focuses on history's largest counterfeiting operation. Before World War II breaks out, Salomon Sorowitsch (the compact yet steely Karl Markovics), a Russian-born Jew, lives the good life in Berlin. He forges documents, like passports and banknotes, and sketches beautiful women to the romantic strains of tango records. Sorowitsch's dolce vita comes to an end when he's sent to Mauthausen concentration camp. Once Reich officials decide to deploy imprisoned printers, craftsmen, and bank officials to counterfeit foreign currency, they draft Sorowitsch for "Operation Bernhard" and ship him to Sachsenhausen. Though he and his colleagues receive preferential treatment, the threat of execution hangs over their heads at all times. First, they master the pound; then they tackle the American dollar. At this point, communist co-worker Adolf Burger (The Ninth Day's excellent August Diehl) suggests sabotage. As he explains, they're extending the conflict and increasing the death toll, but the entire team will suffer if they fail, even their SS supervisor, Freidrich Herzog (Downfall's Devid Striesow), whose career depends on it. As Jews, however, they stand to lose more than their jobs. Based on Burger's book The Devil's Workshop, Austria's Ruzowitzky (Anatomy) sheds a compassionate light on the guilt and complicity of survivors. Though The Counterfeiters plays more like a prison camp movie than a Holocaust drama--Stalag 17 comes to mind--that doesn't make it any less significant, just less wrenching than some of its counterparts. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Stills from The Counterfeiters (click for larger image)






Rating: - Better than expected
Found this movie for $5 at the video store--a 'gem' at that price. The story of the Nazis forcing concentration camp inmates to forge foreign currency to bankrupt England was compelling. The 'dilemma' the characters face of doing good work and enjoying more comfortable survival, or sabbotaging their captors efforts, drives the film. The special features include a Q&A with the Director where a lot of great information is told about what happened to the characters after the War.

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Rating: - Too grainy & shaking
The story is interesting and the presentation is fine, but for two things that it is worth only 3 stars to me:
1. too much grainy effect on the video quality that it seems only marginal improvement over DVD ver, which I happened to have bought earlier, and the comparison of two tells no big difference. It is said to be the director's intent to make it look like old style movie, but too much would ruin what made us buy the BR version instead of the DVD. The DVD version in 480p is truely what ... Read More

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Rating: - Excellent movie about an interesting true story.
This is a pretty interesting movie. It is based on a true story. At times, especially at the beginning, it seems to jump quickly over events. It takes a little to get into the flow of the movie and feel comfortable with who the characters are. The end of the movie is a bit abrupt also. You aren't quite sure what happened to some of the main characters between the last days of the war and the ending where the main character is in a Casino in Monaco. In spite of these drawbacks, this is an interesting ... Read More

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Rating: - A Compelling Story, Strangely Told
The German-Austrian film The Counterfeiters is based on a remarkable true story. Late in World War Two the Nazis rounded up Jews who had been confined in various concentration camps and set up a large counterfeiting operation designed to undermine the British and U.S. economies. The Nazis found some 150 Jews with the necessary skills and put them together in a special section within the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, providing the latest money-making equipment, giving them plenty of food and comfortable ... Read More

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Rating: - an amazing more or less true story
Until watching this movie, I had no idea that the largest counterfeiting operation of all time was carried out by prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp. They were assigned to forge pounds and dollars, in order to undermine the Allied economy and finance the Nazi war effort. They ended up printing over 100 million pounds sterling, which even the Bank of England could not distinguish from the genuine article. On the other hand, as a result of stalling tactics, they didn't crack the dollar until the war was ... Read More

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