Diamonds are formed under extreme pressure in the Earth’s crust. But it seems unlikely that any gem has been subjected to pressure quite as extreme as that which bears down on Howard Ratner, the hero of this triumphant flop sweat of a movie. Howard, a fast-talking dealer of precious stones in New York’s Diamond District, is a man in perpetual crisis. He’s introduced mid-colonoscopy (the placement of the camera is one hell of a mission statement), wheels frantically between two women (his unimpressed wife and his adoring mistress), and plies his trade in a glass cube of stress (the blaring door buzzers alone will take a toll on your nerves). And that’s before you even consider the dead-eyed goons dogging Howard’s every step, determined to extract the debt he owes. Howard isn’t great with money, you see, or rather he’s never happy with the money he’s got, always angling for a big score. The film rushes alongside him towards something major: whether that event will make him or break him is the great unknown.
The idea of a feature-length panic attack, essentially the cocaine-chopper-and-cooking freak-out scene from GoodFellas stretched out to two hours, might not sound appealing. Especially when you consider that Howard is played by Adam Sandler, making this his latest Netflix film after such non-classics as The Ridiculous 6 and Murder Mystery. Yet the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems proves to be one of the most mesmerising thrillers in a long time, and Sandler is a major reason why it works. It’s a career-best performance, reminiscent of his character study 17 years ago in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love but even more layered and magnetic. His Howard is instantly iconic: part Job, part Jordan Belfort, part Jerry Maguire, he’s louchely attired, balancing out his shady wardrobe and dirtbag facial hair with a Star of David pinkie ring. Rarely stopping to take a breath, he is by turns hilarious, soulful and maddening; drilling down into a character who seems initially cartoonish but becomes ever more fascinating and human, Sandler is totally believable as a rapacious lowlife with big dreams.
It’s a breathless hustle, a wild ride that threatens to fly off the rails at any moment.
“I’m gonna come!” he gasps early on, as he glimpses his latest acquisition, a hunk of rare Ethiopian opal he’s procured with great effort on the strength of a YouTube video clip. This mine-dug rock, which shimmers with all the hues of the rainbow and which may or may not have mystical powers, is the film’s MacGuffin, Howard’s own personal Infinity Stone, and he is hellbent on getting it to auction. Complicating this goal is a superstitious NBA superstar (former Celtics player Kevin Garnett, playing himself in a meta plot-strand which places the story as unfolding in 2012), fake Rolexes, a brace of local gangsters and other factors it’s better not to reveal. And doing a masterful job of orchestrating all the mayhem are sibling directors Josh and Benny Safdie, proving once again that they are the maestros of the New York stressmare.
Their 2017 breakout hit Good Time cast Robert Pattinson as a crook hustling around the city’s grimier corners in the aftermath of a bank robbery. Uncut Gems follows a similar formula, but it’s even slicker and more propulsive, evoking such classics as Dog Day Afternoon and After Hours in its ability to wring maximum ‘what now?’ tension from its milieu. Sequences that promise to deliver some respite from the overriding sense of dread, such as Howard’s attempt to see his daughter perform in her school play, have a tendency to spiral out of control. And even his late-night amorous visit to his mistress (played with a winning mix of guilelessness and grit by newcomer Julia Fox) is staged in a way designed to put you on edge, thanks to Howard’s inability to do anything without taking some kind of risk.
It’s a breathless hustle, a wild ride that threatens to fly off the rails at any moment. But there’s actually a meticulous control of every element: the Robert-Altman-on-crack overlapping dialogue (designed to subtly steer your ear to the most crucial information); the ducking-and-diving camerawork (jittery even in quieter, domestic moments); the perfectly cast supporting players (it says a lot when Eric Bogosian isn’t the most menacing-looking person on screen); the intense electro score by Daniel Lopatin. All of it locks you firmly inside the head of a man who can’t slow down, even if he wanted to. “Boils... Locusts… Death of the firstborn,” he recites at one point during a tense Passover Seder, listing the Biblical plagues. Then he grins: “Hardcore.” For Howard Ratner, that’s a slow Tuesday.
