Movie Review: Uncut Gems

2019 has been an excellent year for cinema. With features from established director Ang Lee and promising newcomer Lulu Wang, the future is looking bright for the American film industry. An article on The New York Times details how one of the driving forces in modern cinema is the independent entertainment company, A24. It has been quite a busy year for the company. A24 produced Wang’s sophomore feature The Farewell along with Ari Aster’s Midsommar and Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse. As the year comes to a close, they’ve still got one last film yet to be revealed to the public.

Big Names Behind the Gems

The Safdie Brothers’ follow-up to 2017’s critically acclaimed film Good Time stars Adam Sandler who plays jewelry store owner Howard Ratner. Alongside Sandler is future first-ballot NBA Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett who plays himself in the film.

Like Good Time, Uncut Gems also tackles humanity’s materialistic desires and how the characters are plunged into a multi-webbed trap of chaos and discord because of these wants. And while Good Time has a robbery gone awry, Uncut Gems plunges Ratner deep into the underground gambling scene of hired goons and bookies. This is where the film truly shines, as Sandler plays the part of Ratner to a T. TuxSlots reports that Sandler“s performance was well-received by critics who either saw the film when it premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in August or the Toronto Film Festival the next month.
. The site adds that there’s already talk of the actor being a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination, which would be quite the feather in the former Happy Gilmore star“s hat.

This isn’t Sandler’s first foray into the world of “serious” acting, as he starred in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk-Love back in 2002 and more recently in Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories in 2017. However, with Uncut Gems, we have truly entered Sandler’s renaissance.

The Safdies’ World

Although Sandler can’t get all the credit, as the Safdies did provide him with the material to unleash his acting prowess. They created the entertaining world and the crazy scenarios in which Sandler’s character, Howard Ratner, shone. The Safdies’ imaginary setting is not far from our own, grounded by recognizable figures such as Kevin Garnett and the Weeknd ”“ it is a world that inflicts itself upon Ratner. There is crisis after crisis of dizzying proportions, constant chaos that is controlled but never feels manufactured. The scenes just seem to naturally coalesce into a frantic race where the audience can collectively get behind Ratner, even if his idiocy is what caused all of this in the first place.

The Safdies have managed to turn New York into a concrete labyrinth with danger waiting at every corner. This is only magnified by the stellar cinematography of Darius Khondji, which thrusts the audience into an erratic state. This is paralleled against a struggling Ratner who is the victim of the rat race that he is responsible for. And that, in itself, is what the film hinges on. Ratner’s struggles are self-inflicted, which helps elicit sympathy for this supposedly unlikeable character. His idiocy slowly becomes more endearing than it is annoying.

Overall, Uncut Gems delivers all that one would expect from a Safdie Brothers feature. It functions as both an electric trip to the darkest corners of humanity, paired with the stylized storytelling that the two auteurs are slowly making their own.