Holy Rollers

Sam Gold (Jesse Eisenberg) is a young man whose life is run by his Orthodox Hasidic Jewish upbringing. He lives at home, works for his father, and will marry only the woman he is set up with. Everything changes, however, when he accepts a job offer from Yosef (Justin Bartha), his best friend's older brother who serves as the community's black sheep. Presented as a free trip to Amsterdam, Sam quickly discovers that to return home, he will have to carry Ecstasy through customs. While he is clearly shaken by this foray into the world of drug running, he quickly realizes what kind of financial benefit this trade could bring him. He begins training other down-on-their-luck Jews to smuggle drugs and before long, asserts himself as a valuable part of kingpin Jackie Solomon's (Danny A. Abeckaser). But as the deals get bigger, Sam's family life falls apart and he comes closer and closer to the edge as the feds get closer.

"Rollers" gets some good-enough performances from the cast. Eisenberg brings a certain emotional attachment to the project and does an admirable job of making Sam his own man instead of a Mark Zuckerberg as a drug mule. Bartha, usually the comic relief, plays well against-type and embraces the black sheep junkie with flair. Based on real events, the film's setting is interesting but fails to develop as I would have liked. There's a great story to be told within the framework of the "Orthodox Jew struggles with the abandonment of his family and faith in order to make good money" plot line. Unfortunately, director Kevin Asch and screenwriter Antonio Macia neglect this, the most intriguing aspect of the tale. Instead, the focus is placed on a cookie-cutter love triangle that stagnates the flow of the film and brought about boredom on my part. A refocused narrative could have made "Holy Rollers" an engrossing film. Instead, the final product is mediocre at best.

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really loved & enjoyed this movie. It was engaging from the beginning. It used dark colors which helped set the mood for the cold Brooklyn winter. It's a human story between temptation & wanting to do the right thing. The main character is torn between tradition& morality. Very touching, & extremely well acted by all. If you liked the Social Network, you will also enjoy this movie; it has the same fast paced, engaging speed; you really want to know what is going to happen next. Jesse Eisenberg's acting really portrays his moral dilemma with wanting to be an observant Hasidic Jew, but being irresistibly tempted by the money of drug dealing.

It was ok based on ture events , however I did start losing interest about half way through.

"You are a liar and a criminal. You are not my son."

I'm not sure how close Holy Rollers comes to the actual events that it's based on, but it's an interesting flick. It really doesn't do much more than the many movies that chronicle the rise and fall of a drug dealer that came before, if I'm being honest. You have your innocent young man who's seduced and corrupted by the (seemingly) easy money of drugs (ecstacy, in this instance), that he's introduced to by a shady friend, and most of the consequences play out in exactly the way you would expect them to and have seen before. But the setting among the Hasidic Jew community of New York gives the movie a unique spin that (at least for me) made it something other than the cookie-cutter story it could have been.

Jesse Eisenberg was totally believable as the initially pure-hearted main character whose desire to make more money leads him away from his family and the life he values. It was a good role for him, but it didn't really require him to stretch beyond his characters in Adventureland or Zombieland. Which isn't to say that he's not good here, he just gives a very familiar performance. I hear he plays a very different character than his usual in The Social Network, though, so hopefully my fears of him being forever bound by one particular character type are unfounded.  

Ari Graynor was the reason why I initially wanted to see the movie (big-time fan, the girl great), but I have to admit that her character was pretty one-dimensional and didn't really give her much to work with. The same goes for Justin Bartha's character and most of the others in the movie: they're not really written as whole people. They're given one or two qualities and everything they do stems exactly from their total greed, purity, etc. It would have been nice to see some more "complete" characters, but that's my only real complaint about the film.

I liked the documentary-like quality of the camera work; if almost made it seem like I was watching the movie unfold in real-time. And as I said before, the setting and context the story plays out in was Holy Rollers' biggest strength, in my opinion. How much you enjoy it will depend largely on how much interest you still have in these kinds of stories, as it admittedly doesn't rise out the familiar trappings and scenarios of similar movies. I still found it to be pretty entertaining, though.

SPOILER: I was able to watch this on Netflix streaming movies. For me, a Roman Catholic raised in the deep south and with zero knowledge of the ways and lives of New York Hasidic Jews, it was a pleasure to get a glimpse of a vastly different lifestyle and system of beliefs.

Jesse Eisenberg, who was so good in 'Social Network', is really good here. His character, Sam Gold, is 20, and the family expectations are that he will continue his studies and become a Rabbi. As the movie begins he works with his father in fine garment materials, and is meeting the girl he is being arranged to marry.

But things take a very quick change when another Jew, a bit older and a bit more worldly, asks if he would like to take a trip to Europe and make $1000. Sam asks the questions, is assured nothing funny is going on. But as we soon find out they are smuggling Ectasy in from Amsterdam, using the young Hasidic Jews as mules, not raising any suspicion at customs.

This is the coming of age of Sam, but in a very dangerous manner. The closing credits explain how they were caught and what prison time they served, but the very ending credits say the characters and situations are fiction, so I'm not sure what to believe. Still, a good movie. Also interesting that Eisenberg's real younger sister plays Sam's younger sister in the movie.