paul2001sw-1 Can you be a hero in a concentration camp? Those who survived against near impossible odds in world war did so mostly by being useful to the Nazis. And, on the other side of the fence, can you be a guard and a decent man? On one hand, you are participating in a system of utmost barbarity; and in that milieu, anything short of pure psychopathy might seem like kindness. Can this have any meaning? 'The Counterfeiters' is a classy drama, and true story, about a Jewish forger who made false money to help the Nazis pay for the war; and whose cautious efforts at sabotage certainly feel heroic from the vantage point of a modern armchair. Yet when the camp is liberated, the well-fed highly-skilled forging team seem almost indistinguishable from their former captors in the eyes of their fellow inmates from the less privileged barracks. Many stories about the holocaust chose to address the evil of what happened tangentially, and this tale is no exception: there's a limit to the number of bodies any viewer can bear counting without becoming numb. But 'The Counterfeiters' is both thought provoking and entertaining (in a grim sort of way); and leaves you wanting to know more about its subject.

vostf I perfectly know that a Foreign Academy Award is indication a movie has great production values, but maybe nothing more. The people entitled to vote for this award make the winner a reflection of themselves: somewhat pedantic with a slight touch of low-key stock sentimentalism. Ah, and based-on-a-true-storism is great for both pedantic and sentimentalist easy-flowing images.I should have know better. Yet another movie about concentration camps, and a Hollywood-sunshine approved one! Well, I had been learning some fascinating facts about Operation Bernhard in recent years and I thought this movie would offer a tremendous depiction of it. I haven't read the book - which is not widely available in English - and it seems it wasn't the most interesting way to make an exciting movie about Operation Bernhard.Wonder why the movie barely fills a 90-minute spot? Because it has very little stuff to tell. It pales in comparison with the most emotionally powerful PoW/concentration camps movies, and it pales in comparison with the breathtaking suspense of the best documentaries describing Operation Bernhard.IMO the "rest of the world Oscar" and the Operation Bernhard premise don't count among the good reasons to watch Die Fälscher.

wilsr It's important to separate the subject matter from the movie itself when reviewing this genre.Few will be unmoved by the former, but that's not relevant when considering the latter, except - marginally - to the extent that the film is or is not historically accurate. Feelings about the subject should not affect objectivity when scoring the film's success or otherwise.I watched this on DVD, with English subtitles.The acting I found to be consistently good: the problem I had was with the direction. The action takes place in what can only be described as a series of vignettes, mostly separated by jumpcuts. Fifty years ago, the jumpcut was one of the big no-nos in movie-making: how could an audience follow the action when a shot of the hero putting on his jacket was cut to him driving off in his Healy? Time showed how - people became educated by repetition and nowadays have no problem with such techniques. Jumpcuts move the action along.However, in The Counterfeiters this relaxation of the rules has gone too far, and instead of hurrying the film along I feel the constant jumps actually hinder the feeling of progression, of the storytelling.The reason I call the scenes "vignettes" is because I often got the impression that the script had been episodic in the writing: that a series of bulleted items had been laid out in a list and then the script had followed religiously from them, rather than being crafted as a whole.Then there's the hand-held camera-work. Oh dear! Hasn't it become a cinematic cliché! It is one of my hobby horses I'm afraid, but although the jerky camera works when the movie is showing action as if filmed off the cuff - *in* action as it were - to watch a full length movie with the screen wobbling around for no real reason is just irritating. It doesn't show us anything; it doesn't have any relevance to the story. It's not as if the filming was being accomplished on a smuggled camera in the camp, or this was being simulated. No, no, no.The music track I thought ill-conceived and in many places completely out of sympathy with the subject of the story. Some parts of the track would have been at home in a Python sketch, not a human tragedy.This was not an enjoyable film to watch for obvious reasons, but my comments shouldn't be seen as too much of a criticism: it is very watchable, interesting in the portrayal of friends and foes in a concentration camp with their shifting loyalties and is certainly not a *bad* movie. I'd like to give it an eight, I put it down as a six but have just halved the difference as I post this to make it a strong seven.

laurance-oneill I only discovered this film while showing my dad how to watch films on his pc using the BBC iplayer. As yet I have not yet even watched it. I will and I fully expect it to be a very good and interesting film. Having browsed through most of its reviews not once (as far as I can see) has any one even hinted at the wonderful 1981 BBC mini-series Private Schultz staring the late and sadly missed Ian Richardson and Michael Elphick. Surely I can't be the only person to notice that both deal with the same story. Albeit that the BBC version has a lighter dark comedy treatment?Private Schultz is now at long last available on BBC DVD. It has only relatively recently been released. Prior to its release on DVD some very silly over sensitive people believed that it showed Jews during the war to be forgers, thieves etc...what absolute rubbish, and thank goodness the people in control of this matter have seen sense. As I've said even without seeing The Counterfeiters I'm sure I'll enjoy it...But I really must recommend Private Schulz to anyone who enjoyed this film Laurance O'Neill