The excitement of seeing two 21st-century icons acting opposite each other in such a charged metafictional context is real: Watching Sandler and Garnett haggling back and forth in the narrow, glassed-in confines of Howard’s office-a space made all the more claustrophobic by the presence of Garnett’s pals-is funny and bewildering even before the narrative implications of their exchange become clear.
LIFE ON TOP UNCUT FOR FREE
With the help of a freelance broker (Lakeith Stanfield) whose specialty is infiltrating basketball entourages, he dangles a mysterious, seemingly priceless Ethiopian opal in front of Kevin Garnett-the real Kevin Garnett-and offers to lend it to him for free as a good luck charm before an upcoming playoff game all he asks as collateral is the Big Ticket’s 2008 championship ring.
Sandler’s Howard, a family man who cuts a slightly less abject figure than Harvey Keitel’s coke-snorting detective and mostly stays on the right side of the law, is an NBA junkie, and as the film opens, he’s generated a plan to integrate his business interests, his gambling, and his fandom. In Bad Lieutenant, the beleaguered title character keeps placing bets on the NLCS, monitoring the Mets’ progress on his car radio in between busts and spiraling into despair as he hears the home team-which he’s picked to lose-rallying in the late innings. Gifted with a true box office draw, the Safdies are at once riding high and in a bind: How can they cultivate their typical street-level realism with an icon riding shotgun? So, with a mix of guts and resourcefulness, the film rips a page out of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love playbook and leans into certain Sandlerisms-primarily the idea of a loud, abrasive man-child without a behavioral filter-while placing them in a discombobulating new dramatic and artistic context, like Billy Madison remade as Abel Ferrara’s neo-exploitation classic Bad Lieutenant.įerrara’s 1992 film about a hopelessly corrupt-and yet spiritually yearning-NYPD lifer is an obvious influence on Uncut Gems, which updates both its visionary urban squalor and narrative through line of sports betting gone bad. Sandler’s willingness to lend his celebrity to a welterweight contender like Uncut Gems is both to his credit and in his favor, since transformative, under-the-radar acting is easily parlayed into award consideration. No matter how skilled an actor he’s become, he can never truly convince us he’s someone else think of how directly Funny People drew from his persona. With Sandler, such self-effacement simply isn’t possible. The latter is one of the best thrillers of recent years, partly because of how smartly the directors used their star, harnessing just enough of his charisma to give an otherwise repulsive character attractive shadings and then letting him disappear into the role. The sheer sensory overload of Uncut Gems is not a surprise as far as the Safdies are concerned-not after relentless efforts like 2014’s dizzying addict drama Heaven Knows What or 2017’s sinister, brilliant Good Time, which was yoked to Robert Pattinson’s squirrelly, nocturnal hustler.
Khondji’s photography is just one weapon in an arsenal of assaultive cinematic technique, along with frenetic editing, a stinging synth score, and Sandler’s hoarse, braying line readings, which leap out of the swirling sound mix. Genuine momentum is a rare commodity in filmmaking, and encountering it can be exhausting or exhilarating: a matter of stamina on both sides of the screen. An apparently self-made magnate, Sandler’s Howard Ratner careens through Manhattan’s diamond district with a cellphone glued to his ear, and cinematographer Darius Khondji keeps pace, tracking laterally through crowded sidewalks and hovering patiently in the rare moments when the character is at rest. In their latest film, Uncut Gems, Adam Sandler plays a New York City jeweler whose aggressive speed-walking is like an extension of his racing, insatiable consciousness his body is trying to keep up with his brain.
No contemporary American filmmakers specialize in bat-out-of-hell propulsion like Josh and Benny Safdie.