UNCUT Gems injects perfectly distilled anxiety right into your veins. Adam Sandler blesses audiences with another one of his rare dramatic roles, reminding us what he can do with the right script and director(s) (Josh and Benny Safdie here). Right from the opening voyage through the gemstone, Uncut Gems promises to be something different, and something great.
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The slow buildup of Daniel Lopatin’s score sets the scene for a film that refuses to slow down. Adam Sandler plays Howard Ratner, a jeweler always in search of the next great bet. Time after time, Howard goes in search of the hit only to fall flat on his face. His constant failures rip apart the remnants of his once cohesive family. Despite all of this, you cannot help but root for him; a testament to Sandler’s tremendous work.
Throughout the 2hr 14min runtime, Howard continuously falls down the pit of despair. You keep waiting for him to hit the bottom, only it never comes. Every time the film appears to be reaching its low point, ready to set up his triumphant return, the hole grows deeper. The Safdie Brothers expertly craft a sense of expanding anxiety, developing at an exponential rate. By the end of Howard’s journey you are angry, scared, excited, and ready to go one more time.
The sheer amount of chaos on screen in any instance might be Uncut Gem’s crowning achievement. NBA star Kevin Garnett screaming, a doctor on speakerphone delivering cancer screening results, a livid girlfriend, and the looting of a safe all live in the same moments. And only one of those threads may matter at a time. And some of them “do not matter” at all.
Again, the Safdie Brothers never let the audience rest. The film revels in its own mayhem. What does and does not matter never troubles Uncut Gems. It only aims to depict the true disorder of Howard’s life, and by extension the true entropy of the world. After all, as Howard points out, you can see the whole goddamn crazy universe in the stone.
As more and more time passes since first viewing Uncut Gems, the more the film shines. The Safdie Brothers give Adam Sandler the platform to deliver a career defining performance, and one of the best of 2019. By the end of Uncut Gems your first instinct is to finally breathe a sigh of relief, but after a few seconds pass… you cannot help but crave just one more bet.
