Hammer Set To Strike Again
Though roundly panned when it first appeared three years ago, “The Hebrew Hammer,” writer-director Jonathan Kesselman’s Jewish answer to the blaxploitation genre, may be getting a new lease on life.
According to the Web site TMZ.com, Hollywood execs are drooling over the sequel rights to the film, in no small part because of an opening sequence recently tacked on to the screenplay in which the Hammer, played in the original by Adam Goldberg, shows a drunken Mel Gibson just who’s boss.
The script begins with a profanity-spewing Gibson being pulled over by the Hammer, who is dressed in a police uniform.
“Hey, copper, you a f—ing Jew?” Gibson asks.
The Hammer smiles and says: “Well, actually, yes. Yes, I am.” He then pulls out a .45 and blows the actor’s brains out.
Kesselman is hoping to get Gibson to play himself.
“I think if Mel wants to truly extend an olive branch to the Jewish community as a whole, his on-screen death would go a long way in accomplishing that goal,” he told TMZ.
But Mad Mel is small fry in comparison with Hammer’s new chief nemesis: a time-traveling Adolf Hitler hell bent on lousing up Jewish history.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO