Film Review: Uncut Gems

Originally published December 25, 2019

The Safdie Brothers are good at creating “white knuckle” cinema. Dread takes over from the moment you enter. Sometimes that dread sticks with you. 2016’s Good Time is among the best films of the decade and is a thrilling experience. Sometimes it doesn’t. It’s a fun experience but after you’ve left, you shrug, say “that was fine,” and move on with your life. Enter Uncut Gems.

I’m still not sure if Uncut Gems made any sense. The film is a two-hour blur, a whirlwind of anxiety, mania and paranoia that only the Safdies could offer. The film doesn’t offer you a ride in its car so much as it grabs you and hurls you into the back of its van with little explanation. Frankly, an explanation isn’t needed. The film’s mood, textured by a score from electronic musician Oneohtrix Point Never, is enough in the moment. Whether it is enough after the movie ends remains to be seen.

Uncut Gems is about Diamond District jeweler Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler). Ratner has enough debts to enough people to make your head spin, yet the man has a plan to get rid of them all. Ratner is addicted to sports betting and plans to make money betting on the 2012 NBA Playoffs through a convoluted scheme involving an illegally obtained black opal. As precarious as it seems on paper, Sandler and the Safdie brothers make it even more dangerous in practice.

Ratner would be destined to succeed in a different movie. But Ratner is no hero. He’s a scumbag playing everyone else in his life off each other. Ratner is so good at it that it’s easy to believe he’ll slip out at the last second even as the walls close in on him. He gets involved with some influential people, including Kevin Garnett and The Weeknd (both played by themselves), and manages to both piss off and evade all of them.

Adam Sandler makes it easy to root for Ratner despite everything he does. Sandler is just that damn good and charismatic in the role. It’s easily the best performance of his career and the film is worth seeing for that alone. Sandler puts his considerable energy into inhabiting Howard’s mania, both disappearing into and becoming one with the character. At times it feels like Ratner is just Sandler from a parallel universe and we are watching the two flicker in and out of each other in real-time.

But for all its greatness, the film feels empty. There’s little to hold onto once you’ve left the theater. While you’re watching it, Uncut Gems is a damn near-masterpiece. But after the credits roll, there is little that sticks in the viewer’s mind. Even if told by masters, Uncut Gems is ultimately a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Final score: 7.5/10