The movie of the year, and more, Adam Sandler is unleashed in what is one of the fifty greatest performances I’ve ever seen; Sandler is blustery and raging, chancy and impulsive, jealous and truculent, high-wire and manic, and very, very hysterical in his need to risk everything and go for broke.
I’m not even sure at what point did I realize that I did not like Sandler’s New York Diamond District jeweler Howard Ratner. I had realized the film was indeed self-aware when his fed-up wife (Idina Menzel) called him annoying. Uncut Gems is not about a decent individual trying to climb out of a hairy predicament, it’s about an indecent man sunk in a thicket of scams and deliberately driving himself more into riskier and riskier endeavors.
This is very much a portrait of how the type of downtown hustler lives, the hustler who plays with stacks of ten large and above on a daily basis, and here’s a guy who is willing to pawn his celebrity customer’s prized ring so he can gamble with their money on a “sure thing.” Uncut Gems is like 1974’s “The Gambler” refiltered through the neorealism of the Dardenne Brothers and recharged with the style of early Quentin Tarantino while on a super high dosage of Ritalin.
Howard’s worst trait is his presumptuousness, but if there is something he earnestly wants from another person he can turn on a dime and buy that person’s confidence — particularly a scene where he wills a basketball player to play the best to his given ability; the gambling scenes in effect have zero predictability in Uncut Gems, since we don’t know if a particular player is going to play on full blast on Howard’s behalf or strike out in spite.
When we get to the last act, Sandler is in a must-win situation while his street smart adversaries are for a short time in a chamber held up. And damn if, vicariously through Sandler’s frantic yet little boy giddiness, we don’t clench our fists in our mouths as we wait on a deliverance or failure of a bet to follow through. Jolted by Sandler’s ecstatic acting, it is irrefutably the most heart-racing, electrifying sequence to have been had at the movies this year and I knew right then that solidified it as my #1.
The Safdie Brothers (Josh and Benny) directed, who got Martin Scorsese to be their Executive Producer to go to bat for them. Uncut Gems was originally written in 2009 and shopped around by 2012 before many of their other projects would happen first (Adam Sandler and Jonah Hill turned them down that year). When Robert Pattinson took a liking to them at a party, the Safdie Brothers wrote “Good Time” specifically for Pattinson. Following that success, Sandler had new confidence in them, and the Safdie Brothers finally landed funding for Uncut Gems, a lived-in gritty and sure thing masterpiece and they’re both only in their mid-thirties. And Sandler’s marvelous acting in 2002’s “Punch-Drunk Love?” Not a fluke. I disagree. I disagree, Gary. He’s way upped his game from that.
135 Minutes. Rated R.
DRAMA / ADULT ORIENTATION / MASTERPIECE VIEWING
Film Cousins: “Mean Streets” (1973); “The Gambler” (1974); “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” (1976); “Good Time” (2017).
