Vier gegen die Bank

Business is bad for an architect, a fashion designer, an advertising filmmaker, and an actor. But life is expensive, so the four try to keep up appearances and plan a bank robbery. The amateurs succeed thanks only to the intervention of real professionals. The film is unmistakably derived from American models, but Menge wonderfully gives it a German slant. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen, it is a scathing satire of the wealth and excess of the 70s. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote at the time full of hope, »it appears that the TV stations are now taking the difficult chapter of light entertainment more seriously.«