The Counterfeiters
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: February 22, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
78
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 23 Critic Reviews
Positive:
23
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
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. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
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. Read full review
90
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
This poses some tricky moral questions, and its troubling ambiguities rank a cut above the dubious uplift of "Schindler's List." Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
The Counterfeiters differs from most Holocaust movies in that the emphasis is on the personal moral choices that are made rather than the overall horror and despair. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Swift and compelling, winner of this year’s Oscar for best foreign-language picture, The Counterfeiters may not be destined for the large international audience that embraced last year’s winner, “The Lives of Others.” But it’s the better, tougher film, with a more provocative moral dilemma at its center. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Some movies rest on an actor's face, and The Counterfeiters has a great one. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Quiet, watchful, out for himself, Sorowitsch is a complicated figure - neither hero nor villain, and certainly no fool. The Austrian actor Markovics is riveting in the role; he is wiry, anticipatory, his eyes darting with intelligence and worry. Read full review
80
The New YorkerDavid Denby
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. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
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. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle Smith
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. Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
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. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
A conventional mixture of thriller and moral drama, the film is unsettling in both intentional and unintentional ways. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleDavid Wiegand
Well made, provocative and compelling. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
A gripping, unusual and suitably harrowing -- if, in the final analysis, not particularly satisfying -- concentration camp drama. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldConnie Ogle
It is always intriguing as it follows the arrest and captivity of Salomon Sorowitsch (the terrific Karl Markovics), one of Germany's leading counterfeiters. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianStan Hall
While terrific entertainment, The Counterfeiters fails to stir the soul. Read full review
70
VarietyEddie Cockrell
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. Read full review
70
Village VoiceElla Taylor
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. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
The Counterfeiters is inevitably serious, even austere, and full of chilling, ironic details. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
The Counterfeiters is a swift and suspenseful thriller, and perhaps a little too entertaining for its own good. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
The Counterfeiters demonstrates that no matter how many Holocaust stories the movies tell, there are always new and unexpected ones waiting to be revealed. Read full review
70
Washington PostAdam Bernstein
Though swiftly paced, The Counterfeiters convincingly examines the complex nature of humanity under inhuman conditions Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubTasha Robinson
Markovics largely rescues the film with his mesmerizingly layered, steady performance as a man who solves the problem of compromise by refusing to admit that he's compromising. Read full review
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