‘The Counterfeiters’

It’s not unusual for a film with a Holocaust theme to win an Oscar, but Austria’s “The Counterfeiters” shows that no matter how many Holocaust stories the movies tell, new and unexpected ones are waiting to be revealed. Based on real events, “The Counterfeiters” deals with a Nazi plot to forge both British pounds and American dollars on such a massive scale that the economies of both countries would be destroyed. The film’s style is straight ahead, but its protagonist is not. Rather than some square-jawed type, we get a furtive and ferret-faced habitual criminal played with disgruntled panache by Karl Markovics. It’s a performance to be savored.