Guns & Moses: A Rabbi Stands Up to Corruption

In Chinatown and The Two Jakes, it is water and oil that fuel corruption. Now, money from green energy greases palms and fills dirty pockets. Except, maybe it isn’t all that green. When a solar energy magnate is assassinated, the cops assume it is an antisemitic hate crime, but his rabbi suspects government land use and energy regulation might be the true motivations for Alan Rosner’s murder in Salvador Litvak’s Guns & Moses, which releases Friday in theaters.

Rabbi Mo Zaltzman lacks a proper Temple, but he has thriving community in the southern California town of High Desert. Rosner pledged to fund a permanent home for the High Desert congregation, but he will be quickly cut down by an assassin’s bullet.

Suspicion quickly and conveniently falls on Clay Gibbons, a young, troubled skinhead, who had menaced the Rabbi’s storefront community center. It all looks pretty done and dusted to the cops but Rabbi Zaltzman really believed he was starting to reach Gibbons, so he starts digging. He finds the deceased was deeply enmeshed in schemes involving environmental impacts statements (both phony and legit), as well as contested scrub land possibly needed by the state’s eternally under-construction light rail.

Rabbi Zaltzman turns out to be a very appealing amateur sleuth and Rosner’s solar-panel farm shines as a cinematic location. However, Litvak and co-screenwriter (and wife) Nina Litvak cannot match the clever plotting of Harry Kemelman’s Rabbi David Small novels. The character is strongly drawn and relatable, but the mystery/thriller business is about as complex as an episode of a 1970s network TV detective show.

Nevertheless, the Litvaks and company make some serious points that are very much oof our current moment. Indeed,it is quite significant to watch Rabbi Zaltzman reluctantly agree to arm himself. Yet, this is a very real-life experience for many Jewish Americans, especially in light of recent attacks in DC and Boulder. The title is no joke.

In fact, Litvak stages several highly satisfying shootouts. The action is nicely realized, but the cast really lands the film. Mark Feuerstein quite charmingly portrays the Rabbi’s fatherly corniness, as well as his earnest and devout faith. He wears well over the course of the film and maybe even warrants a follow-up. He also develops nice chemistry with Alona Tal, as Hindy Zaltzman.

Great character actors Christopher Lloyd and Neal McDonough also add a lot as Mayor Donovan Kirk and Holocaust survivor Sol Fassbinder. Both deliver great speeches that really set the tone for the film. Craig Sheffer (best known for early 1990s hits like A River Runs Through It and Fire in the Sky) is almost unrecognizable as Rosman’s [public] business partner, Tibor Farkas, but it is quite a colorful appearance. Plus, Ukrainian-born Israeli thesp Mark Ivanir adds further gravitas as Zaltzman’s Israeli colleague, Rabbi Dani Cohen.

You can experience a sense of community in Guns & Moses, which is rare in cinema today. It also shows how faith gives hope in times of crisis, without even sounding preachy, Frankly, the film offers much that many average viewers will enjoy, regardless of their ethnic identity or faith. Recommended for its spirit and its timeliness, Guns & Moses opens Friday (7/18) in New York, at the AMC Empire.