How's this for a story? For sixth months between 1998 and 1999 one million Ecstasy tablets were smuggled into New York from Amsterdam by a tiny cartel. The young mules were able to sail through customs on account of looking exactly like law-abiding Hasidic Jews – yarmulkes, rekels and all. But these were no dime-store disguises. They really were Hasidic Jews, looking to make some extra gelt. One was even arrested after refusing to ride a bus on the Sabbath, giving cops extra time to catch them. What a great idea for a film, you say? Well now.
Jesse Eisenberg plays Sam Gold, a wide-eyed restless Yeshiva from Brooklyn, who dreams of marrying the girl up the street and busting out of his old man's garment business. After his Bad Hasid neighbour (Bartha) offers him a gig ferrying "medicine" to the States, he's soon mingling in nightclubs with pill-popping gentiles, falling for the boss's moll, and symbolically and literally severing ties with his community by cutting off his sidelocks. What's the betting he's heading for some kind of fall?
The Yiddish word Aroysgevorfen refers to that which is thrown away, wasted – and so it is with this promising set-up. As Jewish crime pictures go, it was never exactly going to be Once Upon a Time in America, but what could have been a fascinating film about what happens to a person's sense of identity when they so dramatically stray from their faith all but renders Hasidism a gimmicky hook to hang a dull, trite redemption tale on. They may as well have used circus clowns. Sam appears to make the transition to international MDMA-runner without a tremor, while there's zero sense of the sheer trouser-filling, slippery-palmed panic accompanying the actual business of drugs-smuggling. Like the Golem of Jewish mythology, Holy Rollers has feet of clay.
Jesse Eisenberg plays Sam Gold, a wide-eyed restless Yeshiva from Brooklyn, who dreams of marrying the girl up the street and busting out of his old man's garment business. After his Bad Hasid neighbour (Bartha) offers him a gig ferrying "medicine" to the States, he's soon mingling in nightclubs with pill-popping gentiles, falling for the boss's moll, and symbolically and literally severing ties with his community by cutting off his sidelocks. What's the betting he's heading for some kind of fall?
The Yiddish word Aroysgevorfen refers to that which is thrown away, wasted – and so it is with this promising set-up. As Jewish crime pictures go, it was never exactly going to be Once Upon a Time in America, but what could have been a fascinating film about what happens to a person's sense of identity when they so dramatically stray from their faith all but renders Hasidism a gimmicky hook to hang a dull, trite redemption tale on. They may as well have used circus clowns. Sam appears to make the transition to international MDMA-runner without a tremor, while there's zero sense of the sheer trouser-filling, slippery-palmed panic accompanying the actual business of drugs-smuggling. Like the Golem of Jewish mythology, Holy Rollers has feet of clay.