Uncut Gems was one of the best-reviewed movies of 2019, taking home the Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Actor honors at the Independent Spirit Awards in February, and landing at the top of many critics’ year-end lists, including those of my friends Will Leitch and Tim Grierson. (I count 20 critics who put it on top of their 2019 lists on this Metacritic roundup, which includes Tim’s list but not Will’s.) After finally catching it on demand this week, I can at least add my voice to the chorus – it’s tremendous, maybe not my favorite movie of last year but close to it, and one of the most intense, relentless movie experiences I’ve had in quite a while. (It’s available to rent now on amazon and iTunes.)
Adam Sandler plays Howard Ratner, a jeweler in New York’s Diamond District who has a sliiight gambling problem and, as a result, makes one reckless decision after another, including regularly pawning valuable pieces that other people have loaned to him. As the film opens, we see the discovery of a large black opal in an Ethiopian mine, a stone that Ratner has negotiated to obtain so that he can sell it at auction for what he expects to be over a million dollars. He’s harassed by goons from a loan shark, Arno (Eric Bogosian, looking pained at every moment), who is extremely pissed that Howard keeps betting rather than paying him back. And in another early scene, Howard’s assistant Demany (Lakeith Stanfield) manages to get then-Celtics star Kevin Garnett into the shop, where Garnett becomes obsessed with the uncut black opal stone and asks to borrow it because he seems to think it will bring him good luck on the court. Howard is also busy having an affair with an employee while still living with his estranged wife, and appears to owe several other people money, but can’t stop himself from betting or making other really terrible decisions.
Directed and co-written by the Safdie brothers, Uncut Gems grabs you by the throat from the start and never lets up until the closing sequence (a gimmicky shot that mirrors one from the beginning of the film). Everything about this movie will induce anxiety in the viewer, not least the music, which often feels like the soundtrack to a 1980s arcade game, and the frenetic cinematography, which often puts the viewer uncomfortably close to the action. The story itself never gives you a chance to catch your breath: Any time it appears that Howard might have a way out of trouble, something goes wrong, usually something of his own doing. Meeting Garnett turns out to be the worst-best thing to ever happen to him, not least because he’s a bit starstruck and suddenly decides to bet huge amounts on complicated parlays involving Garnett and the Celtics. This four-dimensional balancing act he’s trying to pull is absurd and you know it’s destined to fail and you shouldn’t even want this guy with no apparent redeeming qualities to succeed, but knowing what the consequences will likely be if it doesn’t work will still put you on the edge of your seat and have you rooting for Ratner in spite of yourself.
Sandler’s performance here is remarkable, and it’s a crime he wasn’t nominated for Best Actor here. Gone is the joking, crude comedian persona, replaced by a nervous, obsequious, crude version of himself, with minuscule changes to his appearance that somehow were enough to make him seem like Not Adam Sandler. He is this character, so that everything he does fits with what we know about him; without the performance there’s no way this film would be watchable, let alone good, because everything depends on him being credible. Garnett is the other real revelation here – sure, he’s playing a version of himself, but, as with Sandler/Howard, you have to believe that Garnett really wants that stone, and you have to believe his interactions with Howard are authentic. There’s a lot of stunt casting here – Mike Francesa appears as a bookie/restaurateur, John Amos has a brief cameo (which makes for a good in-joke about the Safdies’ prior film, Good Time), the Weeknd plays himself, Tilda Swinton and Doc Rivers make voice cameos – but Garnett’s is the one that has to be credible for the film to work, and he does it.
I still have two more movies I want to see before posting a very-late ranking of 2019 movies, but this is clearly in my top 5 for last year. I couldn’t put it over Parasite, which was just as gripping, and also quite funny in parts (as is Uncut Gems), but also has a more serious underpinning than this film does. The Uncut Gems script also has a few moments that don’t quite add up, but the ending works, and some of the flourishes that pop up towards the end of the film (Wayne Diamond’s character doesn’t appear until maybe 80% of the way through, but damn is he effective) pay off in more substantial ways than I expected. I’m not that shocked that an indie thriller starring an actor known for lowbrow comedies was snubbed by the Academy, but Uncut Gems deserved more recognition than it got.