As writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky shows, powerfully, affectingly, in The Counterfeiters, the privileges experienced by this small team of Jews and criminals came at a price.
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10/18/08
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The Counterfeiters (2008)
94 %
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 119
Fresh: 112
Rotten:7
Average Rating: 7.7/10
Consensus: The Counterfeiters is a gripping account of one prisoner's moral dilemma, superbly portrayed by Karl Markovics.
Theatrical Release: Feb 22, 2008 Limited
Box Office: $5,351,533
Synopsis: Winner of the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Stefan Ruzowitzky's THE COUNTERFEITERS is the first film from Austria to ever receive that prestigious honor. Based on the memoir by... [More]
Starring: August Diehl, Karl Markovics, Devid Striesow, Dolores Chaplin
Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky
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Reviews for The Counterfeiters
Top Critic What would you do if your only chance of survival involved aiding the Nazi regime?
08/12/08
El resultado es notable, tanto como inquietante y hasta quizás incómoda reflexión sobre el instinto de supervivencia del ser humano, y también como pieza cinematográfica.
08/11/08
Ruzowitzky does a fine job of capturing the claustrophia of the setting, as well as conveying the moral complexity of these characters' choices
08/07/08
Markovics expertly projects every craven instinct and heartfelt yearning of the complex protagonist, making The Counterfeiters an experience as satisfying emotionally as intellectually. [Blu-Ray]
07/30/08
THE COUNTERFEITERS is an accurate procedural, just not a very engrossing or moving film.
07/22/08
This richly layered allegorical clash between a criminal and a communist, pits the urge for survival despite one's debasement, against defiance, collective rebellion and martyrdom - the very impulses that advance history, but at enormous cost.
07/13/08
Karl Markovics is exceptionally well cast. He's not wildly expressive, but his physicality -- a small frame, a nose that bends northwest due to events we can only imagine -- is enough to carry the film's ambiguities.
06/09/08
The winner of this year's Oscar for best foreign-language film puts devils, as well as angels, on the head of the pin.
06/08/08
Skilfully acted, written and directed, The Counterfeiters is a powerful and provocative work.
06/08/08
This Oscar-winning film ranks as the most unnerving, disturbing, true-life account yet of endurance under Nazi oppression.
06/08/08
The heart of the story is the horrible choice of survival, while helping your oppressors, or fighting them with sabotage and risking your life and others.
06/05/08
Gripping, but would have more impact if it had been staged -- like Paul Verhoeven's 'Black Book' -- in the straightforward manner of a classic Hollywood suspense film.
05/23/08
Ruzowitzky has some fine performers in the three key roles but there is a hint of unsubtlety in some of the other characters and situations. The obvious is rammed home.
05/15/08
This dark arty film also has some entertainment value due to Austrian actor Markovics and his ability to inhabit his complicated character in a convincing way.
05/10/08
Rarely has a film set the starkest of basic moral questions in such sharp-edged yet subtle relief. . . . like one of the master forger's brazenly passed-off copies--so bold, unflinching and brilliant that, to any eye, it's flawless.
05/08/08
mia istoria synarpastika alliotiki, apallagmeni ap' ta epanalambanomena enohika symplegmata tis pleiopsifias ton antistoihon taksidion stin epohi ton Nazi, kai mpoliasmeni me enan aprosdokita skliro kai tairiasto synaisthimatiko realismo, anthropon poy ks
05/06/08
It won the foreign language Oscar and there is nothing fake or contrived about this astonishing true story about the men in a German concentration camp who fought their own little war for survival.
05/01/08
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(2007 USA release)-Stefan Ruzowitzky’s “THE COUNTERFEITERS” gets picked up by SPC!!!
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