Die Fälscher 2007

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Skillful, absorbing. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Full of chilling, ironic details. Read more

John Hartl, Seattle Times: Turns out to be just as challenging and effective a political drama as Persepolis and 4 Months. Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: [Star Karl] 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 more

Kerry Lengel, Arizona Republic: The film does shed light an another facet of Nazi history, and it does it with an attention to the complexity of human nature that makes it worthy of its Oscar win. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Slick, exciting, emotionally trenchant - well done all around. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Demonstrates that no matter how many Holocaust stories the movies tell, there are always new and unexpected ones waiting to be revealed. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: It is a mark of the filmmaking and storytelling intelligence of The Counterfeiters that Ruzowitzky neither pours on the melodrama nor plays coy with the reality of things. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: Is this the last word on the Holocaust? No. But nothing is. And nothing ever should be. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: The moral dilemmas posed by this operation are dramatically rendered, and without once resorting to cant. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Without doing anything so divisive as taking sides, Counterfeiters pays sympathetic attention to those who play their cards to win even when the rules are terrible, not least because the remarkable Markovics is so riveting as an unsaintly survivor. Read more

Jonathan F. Richards, Film.com: The Counterfeiters, written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, is a morally challenging twist on the long and honorable tradition of forgery movies. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: 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 more

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: It's impossible not to respond to The Counterfeiters and the haunting questions it raises. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: [Director] Ruzowitzky wisely knows he doesn't have to be overly emphatic in orchestrating the tension of both the moral conundrum and the always uncertain fate of the inmates. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: The Counterfeiters is a testament to guile. [Director] Ruzowitzky scored the picture with tangos, and the tangos are meant to be Sally's music -- seductive, insolent, triumphant. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Director Stefan Rukowitzky keeps his camera -- wisely -- inside the forgers' separate barracks. They, and we, can only guess at what is going on in the rest of the camp. But it haunts them still. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Full of the weird details that, though unsurprising on one level, are so jarringly wrong that they seem fresh. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: It is a must-see, especially in this dreary movie season. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: This dark, absorbing thriller is not just a moral exercise in the awful choices faced by those determined to survive history's worst genocide. It invites us to imagine ourselves in the shoes of a not-quite-lovable rogue. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: As writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky shows, powerfully, affectingly, in The Counterfeiters, the privileges experienced by this small team of Jews and criminals came at a price. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Ruzowitzky depicts the care and attention to detail that went into the operation. Read more

Jim Emerson, Chicago Sun-Times: The trouble is that the storytelling and filmmaking are routine (surely faux-documentary handheld camerawork is the most overused cliche in modern movies), even when the human drama is not. Read more

David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle: The moral conundrum at the heart of Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky's The Counterfeiters is worthy of Kafka or Dostoevsky. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: There are no simplistic morality lessons or tidy resolutions in The Counterfeiters, but it asks provocative questions. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: A conventional mixture of thriller and moral drama, the film is unsettling in both intentional and unintentional ways. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: A drama based on true historical events that leaves no conscience unchallenged. Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: Writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky tells [this story] with cool wit and subtle tension. Read more

David Fear, Time Out: Ruzowitzky's faux-doc shaky-cam zooms are less about the banality of evil than the inappropriateness of style. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: Stefan Ruzowitzky's meshing of plot with debate is impressive. His film is compelling and clever. Read more

Eddie Cockrell, Variety: The moral quandary of Nazi complicity is revisited in taut drama The Counterfeiters. Read more

Adam Bernstein, Washington Post: Based on a real-life Nazi operation, the film is a tense drama with performances that elevate the movie to the front rank of films set in concentration camps. Read more