Adam Sandler is a diamond in the rough role of lowlife
Once, in high school, on Christmas break I ended up alone one night at the movies, and ever since then “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” has served as my working definition of least appropriate holiday picture ever.
Each generation deserves a new contender for that designation. Presto: “Uncut Gems,” which arrived just in time for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, you name it — it won’t quite fit it.
The latest nerve-shredder from Josh and Benny Safdie is worth seeing, even if it’s not their finest two hours, and even if half of any given audience will resent the hell out of it. Adam Sandler’s excellent. Even his fans would agree those words don’t apply to much of what he does for a living. Now and then he wanders away from terrible comedies to work with some of our most vital filmmakers: Paul Thomas Anderson in “Punch Drunk Love,” Noah Baumbach in “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)” and now the
Safdies, running a clammy, high-velocity sprint through one man’s risky business.
We’re in the diamond district of Manhattan. The year is 2012. Howard Ratner (Sandler), a compulsive gambler whose entire existence is a six-way parlay in one way or another, feels his luck is about to change. Inside the guts of a large fish packed in ice, a precious raw black opal embedded in rock is making its way to Howard. He hopes to get $300,000 at auction for uncut stones of the title.
But his debts and obligations make smooth sailing impossible. Howard’s brother-in-law (Eric Bogosian) is a loan shark, and Howard owes him money. Idina Menzel plays Howard’s bitter, seething wife, threatening divorce; Julia Fox portrays Howard’s co-worker and Howard’s partner in bed, and in sheer nerve.
The Safdies keep tightening the screws on Howard until the movie offers him, and its pursuit-andevasion storyline, a fork in the road. One way leads to redemption and survival; the other leads to the big sleep.
Throughout “Uncut Gems,” Sandler works in deft, even delicate counterpoint to the frenzy all around him — the frenzy he himself provokes with his gambling debts and all the rest.
The writing here feels a little stale; the script, in fact, has been around for a full decade, in various drafts, back to when the Safdies first approached Sandler about doing it.
For Sandler, though, “now” worked out better than “then.” The extra years have given him the confidence not to compete, or try to compete, with the maelstrom of technique threatening to suffocate every scene. But there’s some true, grubby exhilaration to be had in “Uncut Gems” on the surface level of kinetic thrills.