Based on actual events, ‘Holy Rollers’ tells story of drug ring that used young Hasidim as traffickers
Director Kevin Asch dramatizes the cultural clash that ensues when members of Brooklyn’s Hasidic community link up with drug dealers to transport large quantities of ecstasy and money between New York and Amsterdam. The film opens Friday, June 18 at the Lagoon Cinema in Uptown.
Here’s the trailer:
Here is the article about Holy Rollers by Curt Schleier, which appeared in the June 11 edition of the American Jewish World:
If you had to name the last people you’d suspect of drug smuggling, I’ve got to figure that Hasidim would be right up there on your list. But you’d be wrong.
In the late 1990s, a number of Hasidim were recruited as mules to smuggle ecstasy from Europe into the United States. The film Holy Rollers uses that as a takeoff point for a character study about a young man caught between the religious and secular worlds.
Holy Rollers opens June 18 at the Landmark Lagoon Cinema.
Sam Gold (Jesse Eisenberg) comes from a poor but faithful family. At the behest of his parents, he studies to become a rabbi. But his interests lie elsewhere.
Working in his father’s fabric store, Sam tries to use his sharp business skills to maximize profits. But his father, Mendel (Mark Ivanir), is less concerned about money — the family doesn’t even have a properly functioning stove in their apartment — than happy customers.
When a wealthy family turns down a possible arranged marriage between Sam and their daughter — in part because the Golds are so poor — Sam becomes an easy target. A neighbor, Yosef Zimmerman (Justin Bartha), recruits him to carry “medicine” from Amsterdam back to New York.
The instructions are simple: “Have a good time, mind your business and act Jewish.”
It turns out that in the “real” world of drug smuggling, Sam’s business acumen is welcomed. Jackie Solomon (Danny A. Abeckaser), the Israeli who runs the operation, gives Gold increasingly more responsible duties.
However, his situation at home becomes untenable. It becomes clear that Sam is engaged in some illicit activity. He becomes increasingly separated from both his family and community. When he discovers that his best friend Leon (Jason Fuchs), Yosef’s younger brother, is engaged to the same girl whose family turned him down, he leaves the Hasidic world.
Eisenberg is excellent as Gold, a young man who succumbs to the temptations of a corrupt world. As he falls deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole, his body seems to bend slightly under the weight of his transgressions.
Subtly, he winces when a rabbinical sermon suggests that there is no place to hide from God.
But it is Ivanir as the senior Gold who gives the most heartfelt performance. He is indeed a righteous man, and wanted nothing more than to produce righteous children. He wears on his face the pain of renouncing his own son.
It seems easy to condemn the film for its largely negative portrayal of Jews. But Eisenberg himself recently noted that all communities have some malefactors.
“All the people who made the movie were Jewish. There wasn’t a hint of interest in hurting the community,” Eisenberg said. “The characters that exploit Judaism to smuggle drugs are the antagonists. The film doesn’t present them as representative of the entire group. Every society in every civilization has had bad apples.”
Eisenberg considers himself an extremely secular Jew, a young man who feels religion isn’t part of contemporary life. Yet, at the moment, he dates a Jewish girl “who appreciates the traditions more than I do, and goes [to synagogue] more than I do.”
Ironically, during Eisenberg’s research for the film, where he hung around Lubavitch headquarters in Brooklyn, he became a Bar Mitzva.
“The feeling the [Bar Mitzva] experience engendered lasted a bit,” he said. “I remember I felt like I had been a negligently Jewish person, but after the movie ended, that feeling dissipated. I think it had more to do with nostalgia and hearing those prayers from when I was a kid than spiritual enlightenment.”
Like his Bar Mitzva experience, the film’s ending is a bit ambiguous, too. There are no pat answers. Gold is in prison. What becomes of him? Your guess is as good as anyone’s.
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Holy Rollers opens June 18 at the Lagoon Cinema, 1320 Lagoon Ave., Minneapolis. For information, visit: holyrollersfilm.com.
