The Cobbler is a 2014 American magic realism comedy-drama film directed by Tom McCarthy and co-written by McCarthy with Paul Sado. The film stars Adam Sandler, Cliff "Method Man" Smith, Ellen Barkin, Melonie Diaz, Dan Stevens, Fritz Weaver, Yul Vazquez, Steve Buscemi, and Dustin Hoffman. It was screened in the Special Presentations section at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. The film was released on March 13, 2015, by Image Entertainment. The film was panned by critics and was a box office bomb.
Plot
On New York City's Lower East Side in 1903, a group of Jewish men gather in a cobbler's shop to discuss a neighborhood problem. Gergerman has been threatening their businesses, harassing them and their families. Handing a pair of Gergerman's shoes to the cobbler, Pinchas Simkin, he takes them to the shop basement and uses a special stitching machine on the shoes. His young son Herschel enters, and he explains how important the machine is.
In the present day, the great-grandson of Pinchas, Max Simkin is the cobbler. Jimmy operates the barber shop next door. Carmen Herrera, a young woman of the Lower East Side is fighting against large developers who are tearing down parts of the neighborhood to build huge complexes. Max doesn't seem to care at all about the shop. He lives at home with his ailing mother Sarah and wishes they could see Max's father again.
Local thug Leon Ludlow brings his shoes to the shop to resole them. Max's current stitching machine fails, so he uses the old one. He checks Ludlow's shoe size; it's 10 1/2, the same as his. Max tries the shoes on and transforms into Ludlow. He uses the machine on other shoes, and realizes what he can do with it.
Max experiments living as someone else, going to Chinatown as a Chinese man, going to a restaurant as one and leaving as another, not paying. Taryn brings in her British boyfriend Emiliano's shoes, and Max uses them. As Emiliano, he goes to a bar, noticed by beautiful women. One approaches him, noting that she once saw him leaving with a man. Going to his home as Emiliano, he finds Taryn taking a shower and she invites him to join her. He eagerly starts to undress, then realizes if he takes off a shoe, he will no longer be Emiliano, so he leaves. Max decides to make his mother happy by using the shoes of his father Abraham. Having dinner with Sarah as Abraham gives her one more night of happiness.
The next morning Sarah has died, so he and his family sit shiva for the week. When he returns to work, Ludlow demands his shoes back or he'll kill Max. Using several pairs of shoes to disguise himself, Max follows Ludlow to his apartment, witnessing Ludlow extorting businesses along the route. Disguised as Ludlow, Max is let into Ludlow's apartment by Ludlow's girlfriend Macy, who has had enough of Ludlow's abuse and is packing her bags to leave. Max searches for Ludlow's watch collection, and finds a cache of weapons. The real Ludlow returns and starts to strangle Max (still in Ludlow's shoes) until Max tasers him and ties him up. Max, still disguised as Ludlow, goes with two of Ludlow's associates to where a man is being tortured. About to kill the captive, Max calls off the henchmen. Afterward, they meet slum lord Elaine Greenawalt, who gives him an envelope filled with cash to buy out a tenant.
Max returns to Ludlow's apartment wearing someone's stilettos, but Ludlow has freed himself from his constraints. Ludlow ambushes and attempts to kill Max, but during the scuffle is stabbed with the stilettos and killed. Max goes directly to the police to report the killing, but when they go to the apartment, all the evidence is gone. Returning to the shoe repair shop, Max finds the stilettos have been mysteriously returned to the shop counter, along with his bag of shoes and the envelope of cash. Jimmy confronts Max about his recent odd behavior, telling Max the secret, that his father did the same thing before he disappeared.
Max goes with Carmen to visit Mr. Solomon, the man Greenawalt has been threatening. Despite the threats, Mr. Solomon refuses to leave, as he has lived there for decades and raised his daughter there. Max devises a plot to bilk Greenawalt out of thousands while still letting Solomon keep his home. When Greenawalt realizes she is being tricked, she goes to Solomon's and threatens to kill him and kill his daughter. Max has arranged to have this all recorded on camera by the local news, and Greenawalt is arrested.