The Counterfeiters Review

Messages: The hero is a criminal (a counterfeiter), who seems relatively moral compared to the Nazis, who are generally terrible: cheats, bullies, snobs, torturers, and killers.

Violence: Most of the film is set in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where violence is always threatened. Specific instances include beating, slapping, kicking, slamming heads against walls, whipping, throttling, shooting (bloody spatter, exploding head). Several scenes show a young prisoner suffering from tuberculosis (pale, deathly, coughing). A Nazi guard maliciously pees on a prisoner, who in turn smashes a sink in frustration. Almost all prisoners show effects of abuses, including bruises and bloody cuts.

Sex: Kissing leads to a passionate embrace on bed (nipples visible beneath woman's sheer bra); post-sex, she wears a slip and takes money he's left on the dresser (though she insists, "I'm not a..."). In another scene, kissing leads to sex (off-screen); post-sex scene shows woman naked on bed, her bottom and back visible; later, she drops a sheet to seduce her partner again, and you see her naked from the back, with breasts in outline, as well as a drawing of her naked. Some cleavage shots.

Language: Several uses of "f--k," plus other profanity, like "s--t," "hell," "arsehole," and "bastard" (all in subtitles). Repeated use of "Jew" as a derogatory term.

Consumerism: Not an issue

Drinking, drugs and smoking: Frequent cigarette smoking, especially by the hero. Drinking in a gambling lounge and in a flashback bar scene. When a prisoner makes a secret deal with a guard to get TB medication, bottles are visible.