The movie’s pace is dizzying-the city and its environs, as shot by cinematographer Darius Khondji, bobble past in a peripatetic whirl. Howard runs all over town and beyond, pawning a glitzy championship ring here and placing a high rollers’ bet there. Howard reluctantly lends it to him, and then has a devil of a time getting it back, even as the thugs who’ve lent him money breathe ever more hotly down his neck. But his plans are derailed when the Celtics’ Kevin Garnett (playing himself) turns up at the showroom to buy some bling and instead becomes obsessed with the opal, coming to believe it brings him luck on the court. Then there’s his comely mistress, Julia (Julia Fox), who’s also one of his showroom employees-she lives in the apartment Howard keeps in Manhattan, a sleek showplace with a primo stereo system and costly-tacky neon décor. You can see why he needs the dough: He has a big house in Long Island, a few kids, and a blasé wife (Idina Menzel). His behavior suggests that he can never stop pouring whatever money he has into bets that he’s sure will bring bigger and bigger payoffs. He seems eager to get the whole business over with, yet there’s a new detour every minute. Howard’s plan is to sell off the opal immediately to get a loan shark-played, with menacing oiliness, by Eric Bogosian-off his tail. He thinks he’s finally solved his problem when a massive, bumpy rock arrives at his showroom: It’s a rare black opal, the product of a mine in Ethiopia, and he’s been waiting months for its arrival-it shows up inside a fish packed on ice, so you know right away there’s something not-quite-legit about it. It’s probably intended as ironically nostalgic, though it mostly comes off as some noodly thing your dad worked out on his new keyboard.Īnd yet it’s hard to turn away from the performance at Uncut Gems’ center: Adam Sandler plays Howard Ratner, a diamond-district wheeler-dealer and compulsive gambler who’s racing the clock to pay off his mountainous debts.
( Martin Scorsese, incidentally, is one of the film’s producers.) There’s a gimmicky quality to Uncut Gems that you can sense even in its synth-heavy ’80s-style score (by Daniel Lopatin). The Safdies are a little too enamored with the unvarnished New York cinema of the 1970s, and Uncut Gems often feels self-consciously retro it’s a tourist in the world of movies like Mean Streets and The French Connection, hoping it’s packed the right clothes to blend in. Uncut Gems, an intricate odyssey that moves fast and takes hairpin turns, is a more ambitious picture, though perhaps not a better one. The Safdie brothers specialize in gritty yet vaguely romanticized sagas of the street their last movie was the 2017 Good Time, starring Robert Pattinson as a small-time crook who tries to get his brother out of jail after a robbery gone wrong. But is energy enough? Uncut Gems is terrifically effective as you’re watching it, though its aroma-unlike streetside garbage in the summer-might not linger.