‘Uncut Gems’

Big talk and even bigger bets are the name of the game in Josh and Benny Safdie’s ‘Uncut Gems’ (2019).

Starring Adam Sandler as Howard Ratner, a fast-talking jewel dealer drowning in debt behind his store’s temperamental glass security door in New York’s diamond district, the film gives us a sleazy antihero for the ages.

Set in 2012, ‘Uncut Gems’ begins soundtrack blaring and oddly in Ethiopia where a group of black Jews risk life and limb to unearth the black opal at the centre of the story.

Zooming into the opal’s glistening interior before morphing into Howard’s blood and gut as he undergoes a colonoscopy worlds away, the film leaves the desperate, somewhat gratuitous Ethiopian scenes to alight in the hustle of the Big Apple.

Howard, a compulsive gambler, is a man who can hardly walk down the street. He owes his brother-in-law, pawnbrokers, loan sharks, and a couple of irate twins and has the uncanny ability to extricate himself from this incessant mess with a little schmoozing, stalling and promises yelled over his retreating shoulder.

Almost inexplicably, Howard has been given a lot of rope – enough to hang himself – but he’s got a big ticket. That black opal arrives for him in the belly of a fish. Howard thinks it’s worth $1 million at auction and he’s going to be able to pay his debts, support his family and maybe even keep his mistress.

There’s a lot going on. Debt collectors are circling. Howard’s personal life is in shambles. The Boston Celtics’ Kevin Garnett (playing himself) thinks the opal is his personal good luck charm and takes his time returning it after Howard loans it to him. Howard can’t stop gambling and the jewellery store’s security door keeps jamming.

If you don’t like high stakes, elevating tension and practically yelling at the screen every time the protagonist makes another dumb decision, you’re going to need to give ‘Uncut Gems’ a skip.

Written by the Safdie Brothers and Ronald Bronstein, the film has no interest in unequivocal good guys. Everyone in the jewellery business is an unrepentant hustler.

Lakeith Stanfield’s Demany ushers in potential customers to view a diamond -encrusted Furby and Julia Fox’s Julia, a feisty, opportunistic New Yorker based on the actress herself, steals scenes and is the breakout star in her debut film.

Also starring Idina Menzel, The Weeknd, Judd Hirsch and Eric Bogosian, ‘Uncut Gems’ is cleverly cast, darkly humorous and features Sandler at his finest. Howard is the worst – deluded, unscrupulous, greedy – but Sandler manages to make him some kind of everyman.

Again, Howard is the worst. But somehow Sandler and the Safdies get us to relate and root for a middle-aged gambling addict putting out all-consuming fires he set himself because in one way or another we’re all doing what Howard is… chasing money, desperately hoping for the big one and for the best.

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