Adam Sandler goes dramatic as a diamond dealer hustling his way out of trouble in Uncut Gems
One-sentence review: Uncut Gems is a non-stop, heart-pounding adreneline rush of a crime movie — sometimes to a fault — with a career-best performance by Adam Sandler.
Josh and Benny Safdie — better known as the Safdie Brothers — have a penchant for movies that leave you little time to breathe. With Good Time, their best film and Robert Pattinson’s best performance to date, they created a bank heist that set off a chain of events that tumble into a cycle of close calls and cons all taking place in one night. It’s almost as if the Safdie’s created the narrative with the direction that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Thankfully, they centered that movie on a character that thrives on situations that need to be navigated. It’s the reason it works so well.
Similarly, they center their latest movie, Uncut Gems — which was the secret screening at this year’s New York Film Festival — on Adam Sandler’s singular Howard Ratner, a diamond-dealer with a heavy propensity to gamble. He’s the perfect character to study in the situation they put him in. Like Good Time, they pick a single direction for the narrative: Howard always makes the wrong decision.
A lot of that is due to his deep addiction to gambling, which has driven him into a deeper and deeper hole of debt, which he fills with more debt. He has a seemingly endless barrage of mobsters and bookies knocking on his door — including his brother-in-law (Eric Bogosian). So, when he gets the opportunity to use New York Knicks player Kevin Garnett’s championship ring as collateral for a loan, he takes it. You see, Garnett has become transfixed by a rare opal stone that Howard has recently acquired — he’s planning on selling it through an auction — and asks to take it as a good luck charm for a forthcoming game.
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However, when Garnett doesn’t return the gem, Howard must find a way to: get the gem back in time for the auction, get Garnett’s ring back, and find a way to pay his bookies all the while dodging debt collectors, dealing with his wife Dinah (the always fabulous Idina Menzel), and keeping his mistress Julia (Julia Fox giving a star is born performance) happy.
Uncut Gems traverses more time and a more complicated story than Good Time but maintains the same anxiety-inducing momentum. There’s not as much of a plot as there is a cyclical series of events, which makes it even more uncomfortable to watch — maybe even frustrating. Like Pattinson, Sandler plays Howard as a man you can almost root for. You admire his sheer will and motivation. But then he always ends up doing something that makes you shake your head.
It’s impressive just how much the Safdies are able to make you squirm without making you run out of the theater. The entire movie is a train wreck. Just one you can’t take your eyes off of. That’s a compliment. An apt description could be organized chaos.
As much as it seems like the movie is going off the rails, it’s clear that the Safdies are always in control. The frenetic editing, cosmic score by Daniel Lopatin, and truly remarkable sleazy performance by Sandler are designed to make you feel uneasy — it’s challenging to get through. However, its true brilliance lies in Howard’s characterization. He isn’t a sketch of a person. His actions have consequences. Not just on the events of the film, but the people around them. As much chaotic energy the Safdies often put into their films, they still take care to root it in something real and human. The action aside, that’s what makes Uncut Gems truly unnerving.
Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.
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