#Uncut gems review how to
#Uncut gems review movie
#Uncut gems review full

We're in the New York Diamond District, the domain of Sandler's Howard Ratner, a scheming jeweler and compulsive gambler whose high-risk life choices create a lot of unnecessary problems.

#Uncut gems review how to

Here they've cracked the code for how to build a riveting story around it, and Sandler himself - in a ratty goatee, designer clothes, and lounge-lizard earrings - has never looked so alive. Like every straight male under the age of 40, the writer-director brothers Benny and Josh Safdie grew up with the sound of Sandler's screech in their brains. So it's exhilarating to watch Uncut Gems, a gritty indie funhouse ride that sets Sandler loose in a world just as manic and angry as his character - a world in which his absurd, impulsive actions have real consequences. Howard is a beast of a role, and the Safdies spotlight Sandler meeting every challenge.Adam Sandler stars as a 'high risk, high reward' jewelry store owner in the Safdie brothers' newest film, Uncut Gems.Īdam Sandler has been playing jerks and sleazebags for most of his career, but until now his movies didn't make a habit of acknowledging it.

#Uncut gems review full

But that’s nothing compared to the crisis in Howard’s store when he barricades Arno and his henchman Phil (a truly scary Keith Williams Richards) in the store’s glassed-in security enclosure in full view of Howard, now glued to the TV, doing a frenzied play-by-play of the hoops game that can save his life or end it. We’ve already watched Howard take his lumps when debt collectors beat him senseless, took his clothes, and locked him in the trunk of a car parked outside his daughter’s school.

This leads to the film’s extended climax, a sequence of such profound, palm-sweating tension that you may have to catch your breath. Why? Because Howard thinks it’ll give a karmic edge to the Celtics game he’s betting on.

The minute his pal Demany (LaKeith Stanfield) shows up at the store with then-active Boston Celtics star Kevin Garnett (in a killer spin on himself), Howard agrees to lend him the gem as a good-luck charm. You think his day job is hectic? Try taking a look at his personal life.įor Howard, however, the opal is not a solution but a means to an end. Neither is Howard’s about-to-be ex-wife, Dinah (Idina Menzel), whose irritations extend to Julia (dynamite newcomer Julia Fox), the store clerk Howard is screwing around with on the side. The stone, which is said to be worth a million, should be Howard’s way out of a debt he owes to his brother-in-law Arno (Eric Bogosian), a nasty sleaze not given to family loyalty.

#Uncut gems review movie

Every second in this movie pops, starting with opening on a black opal being mined in Ethiopia (social criticism intended) and working its way to Howard’s store. Shot on the move by the superb veteran cinematographer Darius Khondji ( Seven, Midnight in Paris, The Immigrant) and scored by Daniel Lopatin, Uncut Gems does not let up. The breakneck script that the Safdies wrote with Ronald Bronstein believes in defaulting to shouts when there’s something to say. Sandler catches that vibe and runs with it, as Howard is pushed up against walls and into tight corners. Brooks’ Spanglish (2004), Judd Apatow’s Funny People (2009), and especially Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories (2017)? Oscar voters pretend not to see that Sandler’s a clown who can, almost by an act of will, stand toe-to-toe with the best we’ve got. But what about the guy who had critics raving in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love (2002)? Or the performer who went above and beyond the call of duty in James L. In the annals of the Golden Raspberrys - think the Oscars but for gross cinematic incompetence - only Sly Stallone has more wins than Sandler’s nine. See (or don’t) his Netflix hit Murder Mystery - it’s comic laziness incarnate.Īnd then there’s the other Adam Sandler, the actor who makes fools of his detractors. The SNL-alum-turned-production-tycoon got rich by repeating himself. Though his comedies range from pretty good ( Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore) to god-awful ( Grown Ups, Jack and Jill), they have amassed more than $3 billion at the box office. Adam Sandler is Hollywood’s biggest contradiction.