The Counterfeiters *****

"The Counterfeiters," this year's Academy Award winner for best foreign language film is now in limited release and in up to 72 theaters nationwide today, according to Box Office Mojo. If you're lucky enough to be in a town where it's showing, by all means go. Austria's Oscar entrant tells the true story of the largest counterfeiting scheme in history, organized by the Nazis using the skills of largely Jewish concentration camp inmates in a World War II effort to undermine the economies of Britain and the United States.

The film opens in a nightclub in pre-war Berlin, where Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), is spending freely and making no effort to hide his Jewish name. He agrees to help a couple in need of a convincing passport, and mentions that it's time for him to move his operation, because he's been in one place too long. The next morning he and the lady are surprised by the police. The arresting officer Fredrich Hertzog (Devid Striesow) addresses him as "King of the Counterfeiters." Sorowitsch, surviving prison by drawing flattering portraits of guards, is transferred to a concentration camp five years later, where the same Hertzog is now in charge. Hertzog is assembling a printing operation, and has drafted talent from Germany's prisons and concentration camps, especially Auschwitz.

Director Stefan Ruzowitsky also wrote the screenplay, based on the book "The Devil's Workshop" by one of the counterfeiters, Adolf Burger (played in the film by August Diehl). Ruzowitsky's version simplifies the story somewhat and gives it a dramatic and locational unity. Hues are washed out in the camp. Although shot in color, the effect and the remembrance of the movie is black and white. Cinematographer Benedict Neuenfels stays close to the characters, often with a hand-held camera, which gives the feeling of a documentary. Performances, especially from Markovics, are on a high level.

As the operation progresses, the workers gain some privileges, since Hertzog believes it will improve their production. Isolated from the other inmates, they have enough to eat, mattresses, showers. They have their own world, while outside they hear prisoners beaten, force-marched, shot. As they begin to have some success with the British bank notes, the idealist Burger has doubts. Is it moral to help the Nazis? Or should they, as Sorowitsch the criminal believes, save themselves for as long as they can and not think about the consequences? A dangerous dynamic evolves, as Burger sabotages the work because of his ideals, and Sorowitsch protects him because no one should betray a fellow inmate. The questions and conflicts that arise add depth and additional levels to this drama, and we have much, much more than a simple history from the Nazi era.

Rated R. 98 minutes. Direction and screenplay by Stefan Ruzowitsky, from the book by Adolf Burger. Produced by Josef Aichholzer, Nina Bohlmann, Babette Schröder. Cinematography by Benedict Neuenfels. Music composed by Marius Ruhland. Production design by Isidor Wimmer. Edited by Britta Nahler. In German with English subtitles.

Principal actors: Karl Markovics, August Diehl, Devid Striesow, Martin Brambach, August Zirner.