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.
Review of Rising High
