Holy Rollers is a 2010 crime drama film written by Antonio Macia, directed by Kevin Asch, and starring Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Bartha, Ari Graynor, Danny Abeckaser, Q-Tip, Mark Ivanir and Jason Fuchs.
Shmuel "Sam" Gold (Eisenberg) is a mild-mannered 20-year-old Orthodox Jewish man who lives with his large family in Borough Park, Brooklyn. He works in his father's fabric store and studies to become a rabbi. His family hopes to arrange a marriage for him with Zeldy Lazar (Stella Keitel), but they are much poorer than the Lazars, and he worries he will be unable to provide for them.
One day, Sam and his best friend Leon (Fuchs) accept a mysterious job offer from Leon's brother Yosef (Bartha) and his boss, Jackie (Abeckaser), an Israeli. Yosef sends them to Amsterdam, with instructions to wait for him. While there, the pair are given a briefcase, which Yosef says contains medicines, and are instructed to walk it through customs in New York. Back in New York, the pair discover the briefcase contains pure ecstasy. Leon wants nothing more to do with Yosef and the drugs, but Sam becomes attracted to the easy money, and starts getting deeper in the business.
Holy Rollers provides examples of:
- The '90s: The film is set in 1998.
- All Jews Are Ashkenazi: The film features mainly Ashkenazi Jews since Borough Park has been a prime Ashkenazi settlement for about one century, but Jackie seems to avert the trope since he's visibly a Mizrahi Jew from Israel (the actor is anyway).
- Arranged Marriage: Sam's family wants him to marry Zeldy Lazar and Sam is onboard with it, although contact between Sam and Zeldy proves difficult with the both of them sitting on both opposite ends of a sofa. Then the Lazars turn down the offer, as they feel Sam cannot be trusted, and what follows proves them right.
- Artistic License – Religion: The film has been criticized for not getting many things right about Hasidims.
- Based on a True Story: The film is inspired by actual events in the late nineties, when a bunch of Hasidic Jews were recruited as mules to smuggle ecstasy from Europe into the United States.
- Beneath Notice: Jackie uses Hasidic Jews to smuggle drugs because no one at the customs would bother/dare suspecting them.
- Cannot Talk to Women: Sam suffers a bad case of this, initially.
- Freestate Amsterdam: Sam smuggles drug between Amsterdam and New York. When staying one night in Amsterdam in a hotel, he has trouble to sleep because of the Immodest Orgasm of a prostitute and her client in a nearby room.
- Good with Numbers: Sam turns out to be a pretty savvy businessman in the drug trade, having a much better comprehension of supply and demand economics than pretty much every dealer he meets.
- Greedy Jew: The gentile drug trafficker uses the trope after Sam and Leon successfully (and unwittingly) smuggled "medicines" for the first time. When they find out it was drugs all along, Sam and Leon are utterly shocked and start protesting. The trafficker then says he has "never heard Jews complaining about making money before", which earns him an insult from Yosef.
- Heel–Faith Turn: Sam turns away from his drug dealing ways after an encounter with a Chasid who is manning a Kiruv ("bringing close") table on a sidewalk in Brooklyn, having Sam lay tefillin and recite the Sh'ma.
- Kosher Nostra: Jackie is a drug trafficker from Israel, and feigns observing shabbat to his mother on the phone. Sam himself becomes a drug trafficker.
- Nice Jewish Boy: Sam starts off as this, being observant of the religion and all, then the drug business corrupts him. Leon meanwhile firmly stays this after the first "medicines" smuggling.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Leon drops out of the drug smuggling business after realizing what he's been dragged into following the first "job" between Amsterdam and New York and resumes observing the religion.
