Film Reviews

Holy Rollers

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Jesse Eisenberg
• Details: US / 89mins (15A).

'Inspired by true events' greets the audience when they settle into Holy Rollers, and it would have to be as if it were fiction it would be totally unbelievable. Fincher's Facebook drama made him a household name after solid turns in the likes of The Squid And The Whale, Adventureland and Zombieland but Holy Rollers is by far and away Jesse Eisenberg's best performance to date. The Hangover's Justin Bartha isn't too shabby either.
Eisenberg plays Sam Gold, a Hasidic Jew working in his father's fabric store in New York in the late 90s. At twenty-years-old, Sam is at a stage in his life where he will either embrace his religion or take another road. Despite being schooled to be a Rabbi, he takes another road. When his promised marriage falls through on the grounds, Sam suspects, that he isn't rich enough, next door neighbour Yosef (Bartha) offers him an opportunity that the likes of that humiliation won't happen again. Yosef is a drug mule, smuggling E from Amsterdam (bought from A Tribe Called Quest's Q-Tip no less) for minor dealer Jackie (Danny A. Abeckasar) to distribute. The plan is perfect - who would suspect a Hasidic Jew? So, with the advice "just relax, mind your own business… and act Jewish," ringing in his ears, Sam boards a plane for Europe…
An odd little indie crime movie (you can tell it's indie because of the handheld camera), Holy Rollers keeps ticking thanks to the element of surprise: surprise in the inception, not the execution. Despite the novel approach of the character and his struggle with his faith, this crime drama never breaks from convention. Debut director Asch fails to squeeze tension out of the customs scenes, of which there are too few to mention, and concentrates solely on Sam's Faustian descent from fresh-faced Mr. Honest into hardened criminal who has an eye for his boss's missus, Ari Graynor.
Eisenberg may still be doing his uneasy, socially awkward, acerbic asshole performance, but there is a tenderness, a fear, he exhibits here that hasn't cropped up before. Bartha is the perfect compliment to this. He's a ball of nervous energy, a guy who can't stand still, a guy you can't trust. With Eisenberg in timid, straight guy mode, it's left to Bartha to bring the humour and the noise - and that he does. Mark Ivanir, playing Eisenberg's on screen pious father, has little to do but he still manages to bring weight to the role.
Despite the strong performances, Asch can't quite shake off the familiarity of the story.

Review by Gavin Burke