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LA Jewish Film Festival Opening Night Movie: "Guns & Moses"
August 5, 2024
By Bessy ADUT
Salvador Litvak’s “Guns & Moses” world premiered on the opening night of the LA Jewish Film Festival.
Based on the IMDb logline, this movie can be summarized as saying that, an affable small-town rabbi becomes an unlikely gunslinger after his community is violently attacked. It’s rated 8.5 on IMDb right now which is a good score.
The film is a neo-western action thriller starring Mark Feuerstein (Defiance) Neal McDonough (Minority Report), Alona Tal (Broken City), Gabrielle Ruiz (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), Mercedes Mason (Fear The Walking Dead), Jackson Dunn (Brightburn), Paulo Costanzo (40 Days and 40 Nights), Ed Quinn (The Oval), Zach Villa (Vengeance), Roger Guenver Smith (Dope), Michael B. Silver (Instinct), Jake Busey (From Dusk Til Dawn: The Series), Craig Sheffer (A River Runs Through It), with Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future), and Dermot Mulroney (Shameless).
I was particularly excited to see Christopher Llyod in the movie but there are many more great, accomplished cast members performing for this original story. The movie is a mix of different genres: Crime, Drama, Mystery & Thriller.
We see different kinds of anti-Semitism in the community and how a rabbi takes things into his own hands and fights to protect his people. In a way, our main character is pretty much like a cowboy fighting the bad men. It’s really the first time we have seen a Jewish character as sort of an action hero as in this film. It really changes the perspective of stereotypical roles.
Rabbi Mo Zaltzman, played by Mark Feuerstein, is a hero unlike any other that’s been seen on screen.
The film is based on a true story, in the wake of the Chabad of Poway shooting in 2019, where a shooter entered the Chabad building on April 27, killed Lori Gilbert Kaye, and injured Rabbi Mendel Goldstein and two other congregants.
“Guns & Moses” follows Rabbi Mo, a Chabad rabbi who runs a community center in the High Desert and serves a diverse group of Jews, ranging from young children to Holocaust survivor Sol Fassbinder (Christopher Lloyd). In the opening scene, Rabbi Mo and his wife Rebbetzin Hindy (Alona Tal) are hosting a party honoring Alan Rosner (Dermot Mulroney), a local philanthropist who owns clean energy farms.
In the movie, we encounter many important issues in relation to anti-semitism and the protagonist of the film, a gunslinging Cahabad rabbi fights these crimes and protects his community. The movie, as well as the conversation in the Q & A after the screenings, was about resenting the stereotypes and what being Jewish is really about. The film is original in its own way and brings a fresh perspective to the action-thriller genre. Filmmakers also mention the October 7 massacre, which took place during the post-production of the movie. The film also has a feel of a Western movie in a modern sense and is considered as neo-western.
As it is mentioned in the Jewish Journal, I agree this movie will be a game changer in a positive way, by being thought-provoking and exciting to watch.
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