HTF DVD Review: HOLY ROLLERS (starring Jesse Eisenberg) (1 Viewer)

[Michael Reuben]

Holy Rollers



Holy Rollers is a contemporary crime saga set in the same locale as Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, but it’s the opposite of epic. Loosely inspired by actual events, it’s the story of a young man enticed into drug trafficking by the allure of easy money and quick acceptance by a group that seems to welcome him. The twist is that the kid comes from a truly sheltered background: Brooklyn’s Hasidic community. When he makes it as a drug smuggler, he hasn’t a clue what to do with his success.




Studio: Vivendi Entertainment

Rated: R

Film Length: 90 minutes

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Audio: English DTS 5.1; DD 2.0

Subtitles: None

MSRP: $19.93

Discs: 1 DVD-5

Package: Keepcase

Insert: No

Theatrical Release Date: Jan. 25, 2010 (Sundance); May 21, 2010 (limited)

DVD Release Date: Oct. 19, 2010*


*This is the release date listed by Vivendi and most dealers. Amazon listed an Oct. 5 release date, but then showed the disc as “out of stock” on Oct. 5. As of Oct. 12, Amazon shows the disc as available.




The Film:


Brooklyn, 1998. Sam Gold (Jesse Eisenberg) lives with his father, mother, and younger sister and brother in the Hasidic community. He attends Torah school with his friend and neighbor, Leon (Jason Fuchs). In his spare time, he works with his father (Mark Ivanir) in a fabric shop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.


But Sam is discontent. The spiritual life in which his family finds satisfaction isn’t enough for him. He wants material success as well. It bothers him every time he has to use a pair of pliers to light their decrepit gas stove for his mother (Elizabeth Marvel). And he feels disadvantaged in the ritual of courtship and negotiated marriage that is the custom of his community. This burden weighs heavily on him when a pretty young woman named Zeldy catches his eye. (She’s played by Stella Keitel, daughter of Harvey.)


Then Leon’s older brother, Yosef (Justin Bartha of The Hangover and National Treasure) offers Sam an opportunity. All he has to do is take a plane to Amsterdam and return with some special “medicine” for rich people. Sam finds Yosef both offensive and fascinating. He smokes cigarettes, has no regard for the Sabbath, and generally exhibits a rebellious attitude. And Sam experiences even more conflicted emotions when Yosef takes him for a kind of job interview with Jackie (Danny A. Abeckaser, who also produced). Jackie works out of a club populated by the sort of women with whom Sam isn’t used to dealing at close quarters. One of them is Rachel (the amazing Ari Graynor), who turns out to be Jackie’s girlfriend. She’s like no Jewish girl Sam has ever met.


While Sam finds the courier job unsettling – New York has nothing to match Amsterdam’s open sex trade – he completes the task successfully. As instructed, he tells the customs agent that he was visiting family, and only after his return does he discover that he’s smuggled a load of Ecstacy pills. Sam is appalled, but the thick envelope of cash Yosef hands him is comforting.


Sam quickly becomes a major player in the operation, especially since, unlike Yosef, he’s able to stay sober. His skill with numbers turns out to be an asset to Jackie in dealing with the Amsterdam supplier (played by rapper Q-Tip). But the Hasidic community is tightly knit, and rumors begin flying about Sam’s outside activities. His family wants none of his illicit income, and they turn him away. Sam is left to join his new smuggler “family”. But families of criminal associates are notoriously unstable.


Although the basic plotline of Holy Rollers could be that of a gangster film like Scarface, the films belongs more to the coming-of-age genre. The script sticks closely to Sam’s point of view, and while the rituals and customs of the ethnicity to which Sam belongs may be unfamiliar to the viewer, the yearnings and discontents are universal. (Jesse Eisenberg observes in the disc’s extras that he was struck, when researching the part, at how much he had in common with people his age in the Hasidic community.) The script was written by Antonio Macia, who is neither Hasidic nor Jewish, but Mormon – and a converted Mormon, after being born in America to immigrants from Argentina and Chile. The sense of an outsider’s longing for connection infuses the story, and both the cast and first-time feature director Kevin Asch (a veteran of The Shooting Gallery, an independent studio) work hard to keep that element of the narrative front and center.


Early in the film, Sam listens to a rabbi’s lesson about how each person must choose whether to answer when God calls, and how the choice represents a decision to move closer to God or further away. Though Sam is slow to realize it, for the rest of the film, he is being called.



Video:


I did not see Holy Rollers theatrically during its very brief release, and I haven’t been able to find any information on the photographic format. It certainly appears to be a film-based production, and the commentary makes the usual references to the abbreviated schedule and low budget that are customary with independent film. The image on the DVD is acceptably detailed, given the limited resolution of the format, but it is on the softer side. Whether this is a product of the original photography or of decisions made in transfer or compression, I cannot say. It certainly isn’t unpleasant or difficult to watch, once one recalibrates one’s eye from the habits of viewing more detailed Blu-ray images.


The film appears to have been underlit, no doubt due to some combination of budget and aesthetic choice resulting from subject matter and locale. The result is a muted color pallette that adequately captures the Brooklyn and Manhattan neighborhoods where most of the action is set. (Other than a few second unit days in Amsterdam, the European scenes were filmed locally.) The exceptions are scenes filmed in clubs and other “sinful” places, where DP Ben Kutchins has adopted the cheap but effective technique of bathing the scene in red light. The richness of red in these scenes suggests that the rest of the transfer accurately reproduces the film’s colors.


Noise and digital artifacts are minimal.



Audio:


It’s been some time since I’ve seen a new DVD release with a DTS 5.1 track, but here it is. The bitrate is what used to be known as “half”, i.e, 754kp/ps. The track reproduces dialogue clearly, along with ambience appropriate to various surroundings, such as airplanes, streets and hotel rooms. It’s especially effective in clubs and other locales with loud music and in an important scene where sound is used to convey a character’s intoxicated state. There is also a DD 2.0 track, but I did not listen to it.



Special Features:


Commentary with Director Kevin Asch, Producer/Actor Danny A. Abeckaser and Actors Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Bartha. The four collaborators provide substantial information on how the film evolved both before and during production. They identify the locations, point out many of the shortcuts they were able to use, and offer interesting perspectives on the characters and their motivations. Of particular note is their discussion of the character of Rachel, who at one point they were considering eliminating from the story altogether, because they weren’t sure that she added anything. Then Ari Graynor came in to read for the part and transformed everyone’s understanding of who Rachel is.


Interview with Jesse and Justin (1.85:1; non-enhanced) (4:03). These interviews were obviously done during filming, because both actors are in costume. The two actors reflect on their characters and describe how Eisenberg recruited his long-time friend Bartha to join the cast.


Deleted Scenes (1.85:1; non-enhanced) (app. 2:57). There are five brief scenes, none of which adds significant plot information or character development, though one of them provides an interesting moment between Sam and his mother.



In Conclusion:


The marketing for Holy Rollers, which invoked major gangster films like The Godfather and Scarface, did it no favors. The film can’t help but suffer by comparison, because it’s simply not that kind of film. The title is also somewhat problematic, but at least it’s closer to the film’s real subject matter. To treat a turn toward crime as a spiritual crisis – as a turn away from God that leaves one adrift and in trouble – is such an interesting notion that one wishes the marketers had been brave enough to try selling the film on that basis. It might even have worked.




Equipment used for this review:


Denon 955 DVD player

Samsung HL-T7288W DLP display

Lexicon MC-8

Sunfire Cinema Grand amplifier

Monitor Audio floor-standing fronts and MA FX-2 rears

Boston Accoustics VR-MC center

SVS SB12-Plus sub