Loosely based on a true story, Kevin Asch’s film is an unlikely fusion of Almost Famous and Scarface featuring Hasidic Jews.
Anxious about both his impending arranged marriage and his set-in-stone rabbinical career path, young Brooklyn Hasid Sam Gold (Jesse Eisenberg) is gulled by his neighbor Yosef (Justin Bartha) into traveling to Amsterdam to export “medicine for rich people.” By the time Sam realizes he’s an ecstasy mule, he’s been seduced by epileptic European discothèques and the fast cash and adrenaline that flow from slipping pills past security under black hats and curly sideburns. Not to mention Rachel (Ari Graynor), the requisite blonde vixen in a red dress.
Bracingly paced, charged with pinball dialogue, and streaming with an infectious global soundtrack, Holy Rollers, like ecstasy, entices, but in the end, it fades as it strays from — as they say in Almost Famous — "the real world."
