Have you heard of the joke about the Hasidic Jew that flew to Amsterdam to buy a plane load of drugs to sell on the suburban New York streets? No? Well you’d be forgiven to think that a joke may have been the originally thought behind HOLY ROLLERS but it is one that is actually based on real events.
Mark Zuckerbe… I mean, Jesse Eisenberg stars in his follow up to the Oscar mad THE SOCIAL NETWORK (even though it was filmed and released in the US over a year ago) again plays a character based on a real life person who is also a good business man but instead of, arguably, creating one of the most influential inventions in Facebook, he distributes one of the most, illegally, loved inventions of the 20th century, drugs.
Eisenberg plays Hasidic Jew, Sam Gold, whose family has steadily toiled through life and is tired of pinching the penny’s at every turn. The last straw comes when his arranged marriage to a beautiful and well off girl falls through. He takes up an opportunity presented by his rebellious Jew neighbour Yosef (Justin Bartha, NATIONAL TREASURE) quickly being sucked into, drugs, booze and a world where he turns his back on his family, friends and his religion. He even taints the rest of the Jewish community by pulling others into his international drug smuggling web.
The film does a well rounded job of showing a good man descending into a dark and murky place, seduced and ruined by greed and everything that comes along with it. Eisenberg plays the role well as a man who obviously loves his family and worships his father but is brimming with frustration over seeing his father work to the bone for nought and fearing the same for himself.
The rest of the cast are adequate in supporting Eisenberg with Justin Bartha and Ari Graynor (WHIP IT) who begin to shine if they only had some more screen time. The film also does a good job shedding light on the orthodox Jewish community which this viewer, and I’m expecting many others, do not know much about.
The film is solid enough but the problem with it and many other real event based dramas is the lack of tension or even enough drama, where it sometimes seems the concept of the film is good enough to carry the film to its conclusion but there are not enough dramatic happenings in the film to keep an audience interested. Also there is a tendency with reality based films to either stick very faithful to the original source material or go way off the horizon. This film should of leaned closer to the latter as, like THE SOCIAL NETWORK the writer and director should of taken some artistic licencing and added some more flight of fancies. This film lags in the middle with not much happening except the decline of Sam’s morals, then suddenly ends. Due to this the film becomes a slightly strange viewing experience where you slowly sink lower and lower into your seat till suddenly it just ends.
A part from the unbalanced elements of the film it is still worth seeing, just to get your Jesse Eisenberg fix before FREE SAMPLES, 30 MINUTES OR LESS and loads of other great stuff on the way.
HOLY ROLLERS is out July 8th 2011.
