MikePadgett.com

• Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky
• Austria, 2007
• 

A busy master forger, Salomon Sorowitsch is a man with little concern for political ideals. And that’s what keeps him alive when war breaks out and he ends up in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Receiving preferential treatment to other prisoners, Sorowitsch is given the task of forging the currency that will keep the Nazi war effort alive and ruin the Allies’ economies. Put simply, it’s a case of “(y)our money or your life”.

The balance of principles and survival adds massively to the tension of the movie. We are never left in any doubt that Sorowitsch and his colleagues are moments from the same fate as those over the wall. As a result the film feels much weightier than its mere 98 minutes.

Karl Markovics is an agreeably grim Sorowitsch. An opportunist with few redeeming features, but in the circumstances, we still find ourselves rooting for him even though other characters perhaps deserve more regard. Sachsenhausen is certainly no place for lofty words, yet oddly it brings Sorowitsch a sort of redemption.

• Director: Jim Jarmusch
• US/Germany, 1986
• 

This film ought to be naff: three unlikely cellmates stage a jailbreak only to find themselves lost in the swamps of Louisiana. For almost two hours in black and white.

But drinking cryogenic cocktails with pipe-smoking penguins fully starkers at the North Pole isn’t as cool as Down By Law. Musicians Tom Waits and John Lurie jam effectively as actors, offset by an effervescent Roberto Benigni in front of arresting Deep South backdrops.

That’s not to say it’s all style and no substance, though. Like most of Jarmusch’s efforts, Down By Law quietly resonates with a different rhythm of Americana.