Uncut Gems (2019) Review: Sandler's Relentless Gamble

Is Uncut Gems worth watching?

Yes, with a warning: Uncut Gems is one of the most stressful films of its decade, a breathless crime thriller built around a career-best Adam Sandler performance. Josh and Benny Safdie turn a gambler’s week into a nonstop panic attack, and the craft behind that sensation is remarkable. The same qualities that make it exhilarating also make it punishing, and viewers who dislike loud, overlapping chaos or wholly unsympathetic heroes may find it more exhausting than rewarding.

What is Uncut Gems about?

Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) runs a jewellery shop in Manhattan’s Diamond District and lives permanently on the edge of disaster. He owes money to dangerous people, including his brother-in-law Arno (Eric Bogosian), juggles a marriage to Dinah (Idina Menzel) that is effectively over and a relationship with his employee Julia (Julia Fox), and is always convinced the next deal will save him. His latest hope is a rare uncut opal smuggled out of Ethiopia, which he believes will fetch a fortune at auction.

When basketball star Kevin Garnett, playing himself, walks into the shop and becomes fascinated with the stone, Howard sees a chance to turn one windfall into several. Every move he makes creates a new problem. LaKeith Stanfield plays Demany, the fixer who brings high-profile clients through Howard’s door, and Judd Hirsch appears as a family member.

Written and directed by the Safdie brothers with Ronald Bronstein, Uncut Gems is an American film in English, running 136 minutes and rated R.

Anxiety as a filmmaking style

The Safdies do not merely depict stress; they manufacture it. Dialogue overlaps, phones ring, doors buzz, arguments start before earlier ones have ended, and the camera stays tight on faces in cramped spaces. Darius Khondji’s photography gives New York a gaudy, sweaty glow, and Daniel Lopatin’s synthesiser score, part cosmic and part queasy, adds a strange grandeur to Howard’s frantic small-time schemes.

The editing is as important as the performances. Scenes are cut to deny the audience any rest, so that even quiet moments feel like the lull before the next crisis. By the time the film reaches its extended set pieces around a basketball game and an auction, the tension is almost physical. It is a technically dazzling piece of sustained pressure.

Adam Sandler’s best performance

Sandler has played volatile men before, but never with this depth. His Howard is loud, desperate, funny and self-destructive, a man whose charm is real but always in service of his next bet. Sandler never asks for sympathy, yet he lets flashes of vulnerability through, particularly in scenes with his family and with Julia, which keeps Howard from becoming a mere caricature.

The supporting cast is excellent and often unexpected. Julia Fox, in her first film role, is magnetic as a woman whose loyalty to Howard is both genuine and self-interested. Kevin Garnett is surprisingly natural playing a version of himself, and Idina Menzel brings a withering exhaustion to Dinah that says more about Howard’s history than any backstory could. Eric Bogosian gives Arno a slow-burning menace that contrasts perfectly with Howard’s frenzy.

Where the pressure becomes too much

The film’s greatest strength is also its limitation. Two hours and a quarter of nonstop shouting and escalating crises is a lot, and the relentlessness can flatten the drama: when every scene is at maximum volume, few stand out. Howard is also a difficult companion. The film understands that he is his own worst enemy, but it offers little relief from his compulsions, and some viewers will simply want to leave the room.

Who should watch Uncut Gems?

It suits fans of intense crime thrillers, admirers of the Safdies’ street-level New York style and anyone curious to see Sandler at his dramatic best. Viewers who find anxiety-driven cinema unpleasant should approach with caution. It is rated R for pervasive strong language, violence, sexual content and drug use, and some scenes of violence are sudden and brutal.

Related viewing:

• Good Time, the Safdies’ previous thriller, which applies the same frantic, overnight intensity to a smaller canvas.
• Nightcrawler, another portrait of a relentless hustler in a big American city, colder in temperature but equally gripping.
• More on the crime shelf for thrillers about people who cannot stop pushing their luck.

The verdict

Uncut Gems is a dazzling, draining film: a masterclass in cinematic anxiety with a transformative Adam Sandler at its centre. Its relentless pitch and unlikeable hero will not suit everyone, but few thrillers are this alive.

Rating: 3.5/5