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The Counterfeiters
The Counterfeiters Image
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Metascore
78 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 23 Critics What's this?

User Score
8.2 out of 10

Universal acclaim- based on 19 Ratings

Your Score
10 out of 10
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  • Summary: The true story of Salomon Sorowitsch, counterfeiter extraordinaire and bohemian who was in captured by the Nazis in 1944. He agrees to help the Nazis in an organized counterfeiting operation set up to finance the war effort. It was the biggest counterfeit-money scam of all time. Over 130 million pounds sterling were printed under conditions that couldn't have been more tragic or spectacular. During the last years of the war, as the German Reich saw that the end was near, the authorities decided to produce their own banknotes in the currencies of their major war enemies. They hoped to use the duds to flood the enemy economy and fill the empty war coffers. At the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, two barracks were separated from the rest of the camp and the outside world, and transformed into a fully equipped counterfeiters workshop. "Operation Bernhard" was born. Prisoners were brought to Sachsenhausen from other camps to implement the plan, and professional printers, fastidious bank officials, and simple craftsmen all became members of the top-secret counterfeiter crew. They had a choice: If they cooperated with the enemy, they had a chance to survive as first-class prisoners in a "golden cage" with enough to eat and a bed to sleep in. If they sabotaged the operation, a sure death awaited them. For the counterfeiters, it was not only a question of saving their own lives, but also about saving their conscience as well... (Sony Classics)… Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 23 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 23
  3. Negative: 0 out of 23
  1. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    100
    The Counterfeiters is in its own smart, trim fashion "The Bridge on the River Kwai" of concentration-camp sagas. Also based (like Kwai) on a real-life story, this movie starts small but becomes a miniature epic of overreach and moral drift.
  2. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    91
    Without doing anything so divisive as taking sides, The Counterfeiters pays sympathetic attention to those who play their cards to win even when the rules are terrible, not least because the remarkable Markovics, an Austrian TV actor with a pugnacious anvil of a head, is so riveting as an unsaintly survivor.
  3. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    90
    This poses some tricky moral questions, and its troubling ambiguities rank a cut above the dubious uplift of "Schindler's List."

See all 23 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

Write a Review
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 10
  3. Negative: 0 out of 10
  1. MikeD.
    10
    Riveting from start to finish. I thought other foreign-film Oscar nominees were worthy of winning and was surprised to see this one win, but that was before I had seen it. It deserves the Oscar, and your $10 to see it.… Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  2. SusanM.
    10
    This movie was incredibly well-done. It's clearly better when Europeans make WWII films - they do it much better than Hollywood.
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  3. RolandB.
    5
    note to entertainment weekly: doesn't take sides....? guessed we watched a different movie. personally i thought this was your brand name holocaust movie with all the tricks we are used to implemented to manipulate us and make us sad without offering anything innovative or new to say about the already well explored subject.… Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes

See all 10 User Reviews

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