La folie des hauteurs

A recommended German Wolf of Wallstreet clone

I enjoyed Rising High aka Betonrausch. It is a German mixture of comedy and drama. As far as I know the story is fictional, but it is presented as if it actually happened. It is the story of a young businessman who becomes very rich very quickly through fraud and deception and then very quickly loses everything again. It is reminiscent of The Wolf of Wall Street, without Betonrausch ever reaching the quality of the Hollywood blockbuster.

But nevertheless a very affordable German film. Germany is not known for their jokes and humor, but the understated light comic style works well for this film. Characters are explored just enough and the film never gets boring. And furthermore, all the glam from The Wolf of Wall Street is represented: fast cars, expensive tailor-made suits, large villas, wild parties and the necessary drugs. It is beautifully portrayed, with a good soundtrack. The acting is okay.

For fans of The Wolf of Wall Street quite a recommended film on Netflix. So a well deserved 7.

The main problem is not that this is a very obvious wanna-be Wolf of Wall Street (without any of its cleverness) or that neither real estate nor banks nor any of this works as shown here. No, the problem is that the film constantly tells us how convincing and charming the main character is without ever proving it in a believable way. The story just goes along with it but none of it works because the main character does not. The fact that it's supposedly based on a real story makes me think that the script took a lot of liberties with the actual story.

This wasn't a bad movie. The german setting gives it a different energy, it's well acted and the story is well told. The rise and fall of the main character plays on different levels of his life and this makes him a character you come to know and like. But the movie feels like a long episode of a TV show. Nothing wrong with that ofcourse, but therefor I agree with the 5.7 rating here on IMDb.

I was very satisfied by this agreeable German comedy drama flick, whi other users seem not to appreciate that much. I have Always craved for rise and fall schemes. here this is pretty well done for my taste. i Don't need that much more to be pleased. The mechanism of all those scams is interesting. The lead character's sidekick, reminds me Gene Hackman in the sixties; I would have imagined him playing this kind of role in a performance of his early career. maybe because the German actor wears the same kind of hat Hackman had in FRENCH CONNECTION. But the scene of the crooks asking an old an to sign documents for an apartment, is one of the highlights of this film; the Gene Hackman double present at the same table is laughable; who would trust an estate agent in company with such a man, looking so much like a crook? I would never answer him asking about the time...ha ha ha

I noticed two different movie references that could possibly have inspired this plot, 'Catch Me If You Can' (2002) and 'The Big Short' (2015). Perhaps the only reference to 'The Wolf of Wall Street' (2013) happend after 1 hour and 8 minutes.