Synopsis
The story of Jewish counterfeiter Salomon Sorowitsch, who was coerced into assisting the Nazi operation of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during World War II.
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Cast
- Karl MarkovicsSorowitsch
- August DiehlBurger
- Devid StriesowHerzog
- Martin BrambachHolst
- August ZirnerDr. Klinger
- Veit StübnerAtze
- Sebastian UrzendowskyKolya Karloff
- Andreas SchmidtZilinski
- Tilo PrücknerDr. Viktor Hahn
- Lenn KudrjawizkiLoszek
Recommendations
- 80
The New Yorker
The Counterfeiters is a testament to guile. Ruzowitzky scored the picture with tangos, and the tangos are meant to be Sally’s music--seductive, insolent, triumphant. - 75
ReelViews
From an historical perspective, the story is interesting because it shows a different side of the war than what we're used to observing in motion pictures. - 75
New York Post
Based on the true story of the world's largest counterfeiting operation, The Counterfeiters is full of the weird details that, though unsurprising on one level, are so jarringly wrong that they seem fresh: As a reward for producing 134 million pounds sterling, the prisoners get a pingpong table. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
Though extensively fictionalized -- Sorowitch is loosely based on the notorious, larger-than-life forger Salomon Smolianoff; Herzog on SS officer Bernhard Krueger, after whom the operation was named. - 70
Variety
The moral quandary of Nazi complicity is revisited in taut drama The Counterfeiters, which tells the true story of a disparate group of imprisoned artists, financiers and swindlers secretly assembled in a concentration camp to forge millions of pound and dollar notes to support the German war effort. - 70
Village Voice
At its best--and queasiest--The Counterfeiters asks disturbing questions more commonly found in the survivor literature of Primo Levi or Bruno Bettelheim than at the movies. - 70
Wall Street Journal
The Counterfeiters is inevitably serious, even austere, and full of chilling, ironic details. - 70
The New York Times
The Counterfeiters is a swift and suspenseful thriller, and perhaps a little too entertaining for its own good.
