Uncut Gems (2019)
dir. The Safdie Brothers
Rated: R
image: ©2019 A24
When I was 23 or 24, I got duped by a conman. I was young and didn’t know any better. I never met the conman; all messages back and forth were relayed through an intermediary, which should have been my first clue that I was being taken. He assured me I could get a top of the line HDTV for $600 at a time when such an item went for two to three times that price. The endless stream of promises – which turned into broken promises, backtracking, new negotiations, and, after I handed over my money, fevered efforts to get my merchandise (which assuredly never existed) – lasted about two months.
It was exhausting and infuriating, but was ultimately a very good thing to have happen to me. While it hurt me financially at the time, I’m privileged enough for it not to have ruined me for long, and it taught me a valuable lesson about fools and their money.
I bring this story up because watching Uncut Gems was like reliving those two months all over again, only in concentrated form. The new film from directing team the Safdie brothers is a kinetic roller coaster ride of a movie. It imparts the exhilarating highs and soul-crushing lows of its main character, the inveterate gambler (who is also a conman in his own right) Howard Ratner. Adam Sandler, in a role he was born to play, gives Howard – and the movie – an unseemly, queasy propulsiveness. He’s aided in this by the Safdie brothers’ singular directing style and their breakneck-paced screenplay – which they wrote with long-time collaborator Ronald Bronstein.
The story is set in 2012. It centers on a few days in Howard’s life just as he obtains a priceless black opal which workers unearthed in an Ethiopian mine in 2010. It took Howard 18 months of wrangling to secure the gem. I used the word priceless, but to Howard, it has a very defined price. He assures everyone he tells about the opal that he’s had it appraised for over one million dollars. He’s sure he’ll get at least that much when the prestigious auction house that he’s going through opens the bidding in a few days.
Except Howard can’t wait that long to collect.
He owes a loan shark named Arno – who we later learn has another surprising connection to Howard – $100,000 that he doesn’t have. So, when NBA All-Star Kevin Garnett walks into Howard’s jewelry store, our incorrigible hero capitalizes on the situation. Howard spins a hypnotic tale about the journey of the precious black opal, and Garnett becomes convinced that having it will bring him good luck in that night’s NBA playoff game against the Philadelphia 76ers. Howard agrees to lend the opal to Garnett, since it doesn’t have to be at the auction house until the following Monday. All he asks for as collateral is Garnett’s Championship Celtics ring.
In the first of many, many jaw-dropping decisions that we watch Howard make throughout the picture, he immediately pawns the ring so he can place a huge bet on Garnett’s game. If the thought of someone doing something so irresponsible gives you immediate acid reflux, take something before watching Uncut Gems. Things get so, so much worse.
I’ve never been a big fan of gambling. The thought of losing money (especially money I don’t have to lose) gives me hives. So, there’s a sick fascination for me with watching a character like Howard Ratner con, obfuscate, and double-talk his way into feeding his addiction for the promised high of a big score. The Safdies give us that, and we also see how Howard’s personality leeches into every other aspect of his life. If he’s not obsessing over the game’s outcome – Sandler is hilarious as he quietly curses at the game as it plays on his phone while Howard waits for his youngest son to drift off to sleep next to him – he’s juggling his wife, Dinah, and his girlfriend (and employee) Julia. The dread I felt as things continually spiraled out of control for Howard was palpable.
And once things get rolling, the Safdies rarely pause long enough to give Howard (or us) a chance to come up for air. Just like their last movie, Good Time, Uncut Gems is all plot. One unhinged sequence leads right into the next. Josh and Benny Safdie perfectly establish their aesthetic in the opening minutes of the film when the camera pushes inside the opal just after the miners free it from the mountain. We see trippy crystal imagery float by as composer Daniel Lopatin’s delightfully off-kilter synthesizer score pulses on the soundtrack. Things get downright surreal as the crystals slowly transform into something more mucus-y before we realize we’re looking at the video feed of Howard’s latest colonoscopy. It’s a sardonic way to transition between the gem being found in 2010 and it making its way to Howard in 2012. It’s also evocative of the opening title sequence to 1999’s Fight Club. But instead of traveling through the narrator’s grey matter in that film, we’re stuck with a real ass (literally) in this one.
As entertaining as Uncut Gems is – and it certainly is that – there are also things about the film that are off-putting. This is 100% a bro movie. No female characters are given any sort of depth. Dinah, Howard’s wife, is written as a complete shrew; Julia, his girlfriend, is a ditzy sexpot.
The opening of the film – which leads to the sequence where we enter into the opal and exit through Howard’s asshole – shows an Ethiopian miner with a nasty broken leg. It’s this injury that allows other miners to get the black opal out of the mine without being noticed. Uncut Gems gives the inescapable sense that these black men’s suffering is incidental to the story the Safdies really want to tell.
There’s a throw-away line later in the movie that tries to address this. Kevin Garnett confronts Howard about all the money he stands to make off of black people half-a-world away who live in abject poverty. The moment might have more impact, if it weren’t for how the Safdies portray KG’s entourage. One in particular, Demany, who is actually Howard’s employee and steers potential high-end clients to Howard’s store, is written as a two-dimensional stereotype.
Still, what works about Uncut Gems is due to the Safdie brothers’ sheer force of will to line up all the elements that make this wild ride possible. They convinced Kevin Garnett to play a heightened version of himself. They convinced the NBA to allow them to use footage of the 2012 playoffs as the centerpiece of the movie. They signed up a brilliant supporting cast to populate their fever dream: Eric Bogosian as loan shark Arno; Idina Menzel as Dinah; the magnificent Lakeith Stanfield as Demany; Judd Hirsch as Gooey, Howard’s father-in-law.
In further bro culture cred, they got sports-talk radio host Mike Francesa to do a cameo as Howard’s long-suffering bookie. The Safdies also boosted the profile of a legendary New York City Garment District fixture named Wayne Diamond – one look at the perma-tanned Diamond tells you everything you need to know about his bro bona fides – in the pivotal role of “Handsome Older Man.”
Then there’s Adam Sandler. I wrote earlier that Sandler was born to play the role of Howard Ratner. Just like with his brilliant, off-beat performance in P.T. Anderson’s meditation on rage and dysfunctional relationships, Punch-Drunk Love, Sandler is a revelation. For all the idiocy he espouses in the public eye – when he signed an exclusive deal with Netflix in 2014, the Sand Man crowed that he inked the deal because “Netflix rhymes with Wet Chicks!” – which, subsequently, bleeds over into 95% of the movies he makes, Sandler is also capable of affecting, brilliant work when he wants to do so.
His portrayal of Howard is layered and complex. So much so that I was never quite sure if what was coming out of Howard’s mouth was true or not, which is the definition of what a con man does. One scene late in the film, in which Howard breaks down in front of Julia, had me half convinced it was just a ruse to get Julia’s sympathies and half convinced it was Howard truly having an existential epiphany. It was so convincing that even after seeing the rest of the movie play out, and having several days to think about it, I’m still not sure which it was. The ability to create that sort of vacillation within a viewer’s mind makes for a great performance.
Sandler plays his audience like a violin, right up until the shocking ending that has 1.2 million dollars (and so much more) on the line. The Safdies construct the final moments of their film as a way to reveal what kind of person you are. You either root for Howard, as the perpetual underdog, to beat the odds and walk away a winner, or you root for him to get his comeuppance for his constant duplicity and irresponsibility. I’ll let you know when I finally figure out which side I landed on.
Why it got 4 stars:
- Uncut Gems is a pulse-pounding ride of a movie. Come for the unhinged Adam Sandler performance. Stay for the Safdie brothers’ unique and tense mode of storytelling.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- The Safdie brothers’ aesthetic definitely taps into the Stranger Things type of nostalgia from movies of the 1980s. Everything from the musical score to the opening titles are very evocative of movies from my childhood.
- The deplorable characters at the center of the story reminded me of the gangsters at the heart of movies like Goodfellas or Casino. I’ll also note that Martin Scorsese, the director of both those films, is credited on Uncut Gems as an executive producer.
- There is exactly one scene of stillness in the whole movie, when Howard tries to convince Dinah to stay in the marriage.
- AMAZING cameo from the great John Amos.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- Caught up with this one on an awards screener; which provides me the perfect opportunity to mention how egregious it was of the Academy to rob Sandler of an Oscar Best Actor nomination.