Rising High

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.

This film tries hard to be something it isn't - good. It is a cheap version of Wolf of Wall Street, with mediocre direction, one dimentional characters and mostly bad acting. The main character is supposed to be a charismatic, sly and goodlooking Leo DiCaprio type of guy, but doesn't deliver on that. And don't even get me started on the script and the cringeworthy dialogues. Subtlety isn't this film's strenght. But then again, not much is.

German movies have a certain flair and a certain flavor to them. There are some preconceived ideas too. Something like this tries eagerly to copy a formula that the US has really done well. The little man struggling but finding a way to rise to the top ... having issues with things he has done or the connections he has made over the years.

There are cliches being used and the story is quite predictable. Overall still a decent effort and enjoyable to a degree. Might not meet the criteria some have or expect from Netflix, but what can you do? It is what it is as Seinfeld might say (or many others for that matter)

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.

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.