must-see movie, I absolutely recommend it, especially if you are interested in movies about the Holocaust. I really enjoyed watching it, so I am glad that this one caught me. The story, plot, actors, everything had depth and class. It was all very harmonious.

Great casting work: Karl Markovics has always been an excellent actor and also here he once again proves his great acting abilities. But of course also all other actors did a great job.

Well worthy of its Oscar win!!

I can't believe the first reviewer only gave this film 1 star. This is a fantastic film - and it deserved more Oscars in my opinion. I watched it last night and was spell-bound. It makes a change from all the usual hollywood rubbish.

The Counterfeiters' is a film about a Jewish man, in a concentration camp, who forges money for the Nazi's (more on them later) to stay alive. I would suggest simply reading that last sentence repeatedly, rather than spending any of your hard earned money on seeing this film.

There are many powerful films about the Holocaust; 'Night and Fog', 'Schindlers List' and 'The Pianist' being amongst the best. Everything that happens in 'The Counterfeiters' has been done, before, better, by movies such as these. There is not a single identifiable original idea in this morally dubious and needlessly dull film.

It's hard to list all the films flaws as they were so persistent and obvious that any attempt to document them would surely make ones head explode. Technically the film is stubbornly unimpressive; the production design is decidedly grim but lacks any kind of distinction. The lighting scheme is highly inconsistent, the costumes are too clean, the direction is, at points, terrible, with crash zooms and steady-cam techniques employed like they are going out of fashion (we can but hope).

The characters are two dimensional, incomprehensibly cowardly, lack any kind of depth and, quite amazingly, despite the setting, do not elicit any kind of sympathy from the viewer whatsoever. Karl Makovics has a quite a lot of screen presence, mostly thanks to his interesting chiselled appearance but his performance is so restrained, low key and toned down that any hint of charisma is buried underneath a huge pile of sighs, frowns and long blank stares at nothing in particular.

Tonally, the film is all over the place; it's neither a comedy, social artefact, war movie nor drama (the film never reaches such heights) 'The Counterfeiters' plods along, going nowhere, for an hour and half (that will seem like three) and then unceremoniously ends.

Despite its uneventful and dull plot, vacuous performances and child like direction it's morally where the films biggest issues lie. Dubious lines of dialogue about communism representing freedom and equality are mixed in with a stubborn reluctance to identify the nation to which the Nazi's belong. There is some serious historical whitewashing going on here in this GERMAN production. Indeed the inmates speak of their reluctance to help the Nazi war effort; not the German one; read into that what you will. Also, despite the Jewish credentials of the cast and crew there seems to a fair amount of self loathing going on here; the representation of Jews as cowardly, subservient criminals makes for uncomfortable viewing.

The scale of the causal violence is also something I would like to hear the filmmakers try and justify including as it serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever and in terms of plotting and story it just doesn't help, inform and enhance anything. We all know what happened in those camps and I just can't see why we need to watch a Jew having his head blown off by a laughing GERMAN every fifteen minutes, these scenes only seem to have been included as a ploy to wake sleeping members of the audience, of which there will surely be many.

Overall, 'The Counterfeiters' is an absolute mess of a film but there is one scene that, in a better movie, could be extremely moving and powerful. The inmates go into the shower block, they are naked and vulnerable and have no idea whether or not they are going to get soaked by water, or choked by gas. It's a powerful and effective reminder of what this film could have been; given a dozen re-writes and a fresh perspective.

I haven't seen the DVD, but saw it in the cinema. This is a great film. Great story (true, of course) great performances, cinematography, and very powerful. Completely deserved the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Could have been so much more horrific due to the circumstances in which the film is set, but deals with it very well. I thought it was one of the best films of the year.