Holy Rollers

TedFlicks Rating:

$11.00 ticket on a scale of $0 to $13.50.

HOLY ECSTASY

“Holy Rollers,” the picture in which Jesse Eisenberg starred before becoming a household name in “The Social Network,” is a tour de force.  It was shot on a miniscule budget of one million dollars over a period of 20 days (faster than greased lightning) according to the filmmakers.  The crime thriller ducks a bullet.  It’s based on the true story that in 1998 a group of Hassidic Jews smuggled more than one million ecstasy pills into the US from Amsterdam.  Anything based on a true story runs the danger of falling off the precipice of truth into the pit of boredom.  To their credit helmer Kevin Asch and scribe Antonio Macia strip every non-dramatic element from the story and rely primarily on Eisenberg to carry it.  The strategy works.  “Holy Rollers” is a film in fighting trim.

Eisenberg is Sam Gold, a 20-year-old Hassid from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where in the closely knit Jewish community there are no secrets.  He works for his father, Mendel (Mark Ivanir) in a modestly successful retail shop and studies to be a rabbi.  Sam, however, has ambitions.  In short order he is recruited as drug mule by Yosef (Justin Bartha) a good friend who has connections to an Israeli cartel.  What better cover for a mule than an orthodox Jew wearing traditional garb.  Who’d suspect him?

In short order Sam takes to the work like a kitten to cream.  Much of pic’s drama lies in the nuanced facial expressions caught in Eisenberg’s closeups.  His facial reactions to situations act both as exposition, move the plot along, and tell the story of his trajectory.  Give the young man credit for being an extraordinary film actor.  Give lenser Ben Kutchins credit for going for those tight shots that say so much.  Sam’s success is not without cost:  He is virtually disowned by his family, who know he’s up to something.  His arranged marriage to Zeldy Lazar (Stella Keitel, Harvey Keitel’s daughter), falls apart and the Rebbe (Bern Cohen) who has heard rumors about Sam, gives his blessing to another marriage for the girl.  Sam attends the wedding.

A pivotal argument with Mendel marks a turning point for Sam.  He dons all the armor of unrighteousness, clipping his ringlets and dressing like a gentile.  He becomes a recruiter, signing up Hassidim for trips to Amsterdam.  But there is an Achilles heel in this frittata, and it comes in the form of Yosef’s skimming from the cartel.  Along the way, Sam finds another girlfriend, the uninhibited Rachel Apfel, played with brio by Ari Graynor as another apostate Jew.  She cements his commitment to the drug trade.

The innocence (including Sam’s at pic’s outset) of the Hassidim recruited as mules is one of pic’s most amazing aspects.  Ecstasy is called “medicine.”  Mules are assured that it is harmless.  Don’t these guys read the papers?

Eventually Yosef’s greed gets the FBI on the Hassids’ trail.  A group of mules is detained at JFK Airport.  Sam’s collapse, perhaps back into his faith — the interpretation is left to the viewer — is poignantly and efficiently expressed by Eisenberg is a short scene in pic’s final reel.  The denouement is explained by title cards following the end of pic’s action.  In a neat bit of trivia, Eisenberg’s kid sister Hallie Kate Eisenberg is cast as his on-screen kid sister.  She does her bit for the developing family business.

The 89 minutes “Holly Rollers” takes to unspool seem to go by much faster.  This is a tribute to the filmmakers who made budget constraints work in their favor via a tightly wrought job.  If it were not for some dodgy sound recording, this R-rated pic would get five stars instead of four.

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Holy Roller on Netflix