The Counterfeiters
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DVD details
DVD: Region Code 99Audio: German (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 99 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-08-05
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures
DVD Reviews of The Counterfeiters
DVD Review: an amazing more or less true story
Summary: 5 Stars
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 almost over and it no longer made any difference.
This movie is a fictionalized version of this story. Prisoners with relevant skills are brought in to a special, top-secret area in a concentration camp, where in contrast to the appalling conditions elsewhere, they are provided with sufficient food, decent beds, time for breaks, etc. But if they don't produce results, they will be shot. Sorowich, a master counterfeiter, is brought in to take charge of the counterfeiting operation. Burger, one of the other workers on the operation, wants to sabotage the operation, so as to hamper the Nazi war effort. This view is not popular among the other workers, who do not feel like dying for this cause, just so that other workers can be brought in to do the job for them. Much of the movie is a dramatization of this moral argument. The end result is to delay the production of the dollar just enough. The protagonist is Sorowich, who initially just wants to save his skin, and also has a personal longing to crack the dollar, but eventually sort of comes around to the other point of view.
The movie is very well done. The acting is excellent, especially the actors who play Sorowich, and Herzog, the boss of the concentration camp. One is really immersed in the concentration camp, which is quite scary, although not nearly as gruesome as it could be since we are in the elite section.
The bonus features are worth watching and tell more about the true story on which the movie is based. For example, in reality, only two people knew about the sabotage, unlike in the movie where for dramatic purposes lots of people knew about it so that they could argue about it on screen.
DVD Review: Riveting movie, but...........................
Summary: 3 Stars
This was a riveting movie. The will to live and survive cast the tormnetors and the tormented in the same boat.
But the fragmented English subtiles spoils. Whoever did them did not know Englsh or was a sleep at the wheel. Many portions are without substitles. When they do appear, they are in bits and pieces, making them meaningless, ruining the enjoyment of the film.
Sellers should check out the DVD instead of making customers the quailty controllers.
DVD Review: Great Germanic Opus
Summary: 5 Stars
The Counterfeiters is one very good film. It's even better when one considers it is based on a true event within Nazi Germany! Jewish counterfeiters and forgers who ran afoul of the law are in a prison camp and are recruited by the Third Reich to counterfeit American and British banknotes. How this is accomplished and why it ultimately fails is carried out in detail in this film.
The film is in German, with fairly large English sub-titles. Among the extras is a queston-and-answer period with the director, who speaks near-perfect English. There are few other extras. Beautifully photographed, it was the best foreign-language Oscar winner for 2007. Very highly recommended!
DVD Review: Wow what an amazing preview! I learned nothing.
Summary: 1 Stars
I was riveted. A man walks along a beach, up a boardwalk and into a hotel. The tension was killing me, I mean, was he there to find a spy, the woman of his dreams, or to work on the plumbing? Those not wanting to risk renting the movie based only on this preview will never know. I can live with that.
DVD Review: Is this dubbed or subtitled?
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm interested in downloading the On-Demand version, but I don't want it if it is dubbed English. Can anyone who's rented it tell us if this is the original German version with subtitles? Nothing in the online description that I can find seems to address this.
Description of The Counterfeiters
Winner of the Academy Award? for Best Foreign Language Film, The Counterfeiters tells the true story of Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a swindler who made a name for himself as Berlin's "King of the Counterfeiters." However, his life of women and easy money is cut short when he's arrested and placed in a Nazi concentration camp. With the German army on the verge of bankruptcy, Sorowitsch makes a sobering deal with his captors: in exchange for a comfortable bed, good food and fair treatment, Sorowitsch, along with the other hand-picked specialists, must counterfeit bank notes to fund the Nazi War effort. If he does as they say, he lives another day. If he rebels, he faces the same fate as the rest of the camp's prisoners. But if he lives, will he be able to live with himself?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)
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