Directed by Josh and Benny Safdie

Written by Ronald Bronstein and Josh and Benny Safdie

Starring Adam Sandler, Julia Fox, Idina Menzel

Uncut Gems rides an extremely thin line of realism and annoying the audience. I think in the end I like this film, but I almost gave up on it. Adam Sandler’s performance is a really good one, but the character of Howard Ratner is so miserably anxious and annoying that it becomes exhausting sticking with him. I walked into the screening with little knowledge of the movie, but did notice the 2 hour and 15 minute runtime which became a red flag my mind. And I felt it, I felt that extra half hour or so where the movie dragged in its neurotic chaos. It’s so good at what it does that you just don’t want anything to do with it anymore. This crime thriller, about a jeweler in New York racing to pay off debts by making more debts with money he doesn’t have lends itself to a tightly knit 100 minutes so. You go longer and you’ll have to become an epic like Goodfellas, it’s just not material you should drag out. It’s effectively shot with longer telephoto lenses, and its blurred out graininess give it an ugly and real look. Even though it all takes place in 2012 you’d think this movie was straight out of the 80s.

Nothing seems to go right for Howard Ratner. He’s addicted to gambling, and can’t stop lying to the people he deals with. He has 3 kids from a marriage that it already over. His mistress Julia works for him in the jewelry store. His employees are fed up with him, as are all the people he makes deals with. As is everyone around him. Maybe it’s because he keeps making inexplicable decisions, like one that has him lending a black opal stone he tracked down in Ethiopia to basketball star Kevin Garnett (playing himself) minutes after it’s arrived. The stone is appraised at around 1 million dollars, and Howard notices if you look into the rocks you can see the whole universe there. It was dug up in the mines, and is really, really old. Howard feels a direct connection with the Ethiopian Jews who discovered it, and his passion for the stone is so infectious that Garnett becomes obsessed with it. “I need this stone”. He too seems to share a kindred spirit with it and sees it as good luck. He wants to borrow it for the night to help him win in his game. Howard eventually agrees, and takes his championship ring as collateral.

Now see, a decision as stupid as that would never work on paper. But the way the Safdie brothers play it out makes it work. I believed it all. You can guess that stone ain’t gonna be back to him the next day.

The movie follows this and similar misguided and poor decisions that leads Howard along in the next couple days. It’s about as real as it gets, and I was in there with him, even if I was frustrated as hell. But that was for a majority of the runtime, but close in the last third of the movie is where I really couldn’t stand watching anymore. It’s a scene that goes on way longer than it should and is boring if not useless. I will say again that I think the movie got what it was going for, and just the story itself is not one so easy to sit through.

There are close calls and neat reveals, like who a certain debt collector ends up being, that the filmmakers find interesting ways of showing. But a little goes a long way, and after the 9th or so scene of Howard hassling his way out of a scenario only to doom himself to another, you just want to scream.

I will say the actress who plays Julia (Julia Fox), who I think is a newcomer, is incredible in her role. I don’t know who she is or where she came from but she gives the best performance in the entire picture. Her ditsy, bipolar relationship with Howard is insane to witness, but it works. It’s tragic and funny and also annoying yet sweet but I think it’s the best part of it all.

The music is also weird. I couldn’t tell you what genre or what I was listening to except a lot of snyth, it made the movie cool and bizarre but strangely offputting. I think this may be a movie people walk out of, if only because the audio experience is just so out there.

I felt the presence and influence of Paul Thomas Anderson’s work, and a couple of the trippy effects shots with the music was reminiscent of 2001. But this movie was never going to hold a candle to Punch Drunk Love, although Sandler proves again he is able to do well with the right material.

The ending left with me with a sickeningly awful feeling in my gut, I didn’t see it coming at all. But when I really think about, I wonder if there was any other outcome. And maybe that’s what they wanted me to feel. An interesting movie going experience, one I hope never to relive.