'Uncut Gems'
There’s broad agreement among critics that Adam Sandler gives the performance of his career in “Uncut Gems,” another breakneck run through the halls of New York greed by the directing-writing team of Benny and Josh Safdie.
It’s true that the Safdies channel Sandler’s rapid-fire delivery and manic desperation into the strongest character he’s ever played, and that Sandler gives back a passionate performance. That doesn’t make Sandler’s character any more likable, or his actions less repellent, or the movie any less uncomfortable to sit through.
It’s May 2012 in New York’s diamond district, and Sandler’s character, Howard Ratner, thinks he’s mere days away from the biggest score of his life. He’s procured a rare mineral, a stone embedded with uncut opals, smuggled out of an Ethiopian mine. His plan is to auction off the opal stone, make a ton of money and repay the Russian thugs and their boss, Arno (Eric Bogosian), before anybody’s thumbs get broken.
Howard’s weakness is gambling, particularly on the NBA playoffs that are underway. So things get really complicated when a business associate, Demany (Lakeith Stanfield), brings in a high-level client: Celtics center Kevin Garnett (playing himself), whose team is locked in a conference battle with the 76ers. When Garnett sees the opal stone, he thinks it’s the good-luck charm he needs, so Howard reluctantly loans it to him for a night. But the stone’s absence causes an unraveling in Howard’s plans, with bloody consequences.
Further complicating Howard’s life is that his wife, Dinah (Idina Menzel), wants a divorce — and when we see Howard maintains a downtown apartment for his mistress, Julia (Julia Fox), who works in Howard’s jewelry store, we start thinking Dinah’s got the right idea.
The Safdies excel in creating a grimy New York world and creating the characters who inhabit it. In this case, it’s the tiny super-expensive jewelry stores where the doors are double secure, like an airlock in a spaceship, and the riches are both luxurious and ridiculous (like the diamond-encrusted Furby medallions Howard tries to sell). Demany’s connections also take Howard, and us, backstage at the playoffs and into exclusive nightclubs, like the one where an up-and-coming singer called The Weeknd (playing himself) performs.
Sandler is so good as Howard, this perpetual schemer and hustler, that it’s unsettling. As the Safdies follow Howard down that rabbit hole of his lies, a viewer may squirm from the tension that’s built, even as the storyline devolves into some “Ocean’s 11” plotting that feels artificial next to the gritty world the Safdies have created through most of this dynamic, frenzied movie.
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‘Uncut Gems’
★★★
Opened December 13 in select cities; opening Wednesday, December 25, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for pervasive strong language, violence, some sexual content and brief drug use.