Uncut Gems (2020) - Movie Review

What irony that a film all about a compulsive gambler would find me actually cashing in on one of my bets. A couple of years ago, between Adam Sandler’s work on Sandy Wexler and The Meyerowitz Stories, I saw a major shift in his place as an actor. The kind that not only gave hope for bigger and better things to come, but also gave the impression that the man could be on the verge as a serious breakthrough, big enough to possibly warrant some re-evaluation of someone most audiences wrote off years ago. Meyerowitz may have shown that that shift wasn’t a fluke, but this film outright confirms that rejuvenation.

Couched amidst a cast made of equal parts African-American and Jewish actors, Sandler really sinks his teeth into the character he’s given here. A struggling jeweller whose relationship with his family is only slightly more fucked-up than his relationship with everyone else (par for the course for a Safdie brother production), it isn’t so much a complete change-up from his usual style as it is a honed-in utilisation of what he’s best known for. The mile-a-minute delivery, the impassioned aggression, the way with curses, the emphasis on his strained familial life; none of this is new for him. It’s just that it’s all been given room to breathe, and the result is a performance that pretty much confirms that Sandler is a good actor. And with the right material, a damn good one at that.

On the technical side of things, this fits in with what the Safdies have spent over a decade cutting away at in terms of style. Grimy NYC backdrop, emphasis on character over story, not to mention enough frantic pacing to short out every pacemaker in a ten-mile radius. Much like with their previous effort Good Time, they and co-writer/editor Ronald Bronstein show an uncanny handling of tension and build-up, piling all these little bits and pieces of interaction on top of each other to create a genuinely anxious piece of cinema. Same goes for Oneohtrix Point Never with the soundtrack, who builds on his crime thriller synthscapes from Good Time and adds elements of jazz and New Age music to make something just as driving, but also gargantuan in size and spiritual in mood.

Which given the film’s main cultural aesthetic ends up being quite fitting. With the aforementioned cast predominantly made up of Jewish talent, the film itself basically takes the Coen brothers route in showing the Safdies’ ruminations on their heritage and, more pointedly, the stereotypes associated with it. Sandler’s Howard Ratner has a fair amount of Shylock energy on the surface, but that itself doesn’t really get refuted; instead, it gets tweaked into what the Safdies themselves described as a kind of superpower.

On the more immediate level, that relates to Howard’s connection to the hip-hop world, being described as basically the guy who started the bling movement. On one hand, yeah, that wasn’t exactly the best of times for the mainstream hip-hop movement, but on the other, any excuse to bring Trinidad James back into people’s memories is worthwhile (And on that topic, the period detail here is really damn cool). Same goes for the surprising inclusion of The Weeknd, not to mention Kevin Garnett in a role that manages to impress even more than Sandler’s. There’s always been solidarity between these cultures (Jewish artists were instrumental in both the genesis of hip-hop and the sporting world), which adds another texture to the film’s presentation.

But the main point, though? It’s the title: The Uncut Gem, specifically a black opal, that Howard put himself into crippling debt to obtain. A glorious zoom-in to the opal’s many facets is what truly opens the film, setting the tone for a story that is far more than it seems on the surface. Not only that, the dialogue gets into aspects of history within the jewellery business, with each gem being a microcosm of the history that formed it. One whose value is constantly being rewritten and re-evaluated throughout the film, along with the value of Howard as a person. It plays into the Jewish notion of learning through suffering, much like the Coens’ A Simple Man, to create a genuine cultural monument, one that is as fascinating as it is bloody stressful to sit through.

Seriously, this whole review was written up while it feels like I’m having a panic attack, so while I definitely recommend checking this one out, be warned that you might feel a bit twitchy afterwards.