UNCUT GEMS

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

There’s a Venn diagram of basketball fans and cinema fans, maybe also Adam Sandler fans, who are really going to love Uncut Gems. This film, by Bennie Safdie and Josh Safdie, certainly found a unique niche: it’s about a jeweler with a serious gambling problem (Sandler), and also features Boston Celtics player Kevin Garnett in a key supporting part . . . as himself.

It may be that this movie just isn’t for me. I don’t even know what being a “power forward” means. Strangely, as time passes and I let it sink in, it becomes clearer to me how well constructed Uncut Gems really is. That doesn’t mean I have to be a huge fan of it. There’s almost too much tension, the cinematography is competent but too over-saturated for my taste, and there’s a lot of screaming.

That may be why Adam Sandler was perfect for this movie. That guy has been a professional screamer for decades, and I really never liked him. Except that, in the 2002 P.T. Anderson masterpiece Punch-Drunk Love, he proved that in the hands of the right director, Sandler actually can be an incredible dramatic actor. Does he just do one serious movie truly worthy of consideration within the span of each decade, or what?

He is indeed well used here. We meet Howard Ratner during a colonoscopy, of all things, after a prelude depicting the theft of gems in mines of Ethiopia. The opening titles are very cool, if a bit odd in the end: they depict a view of the universe within those gems, until it dissolves into the inner lining of Howard’s colon. From there, Howard spends the vast majority of the story getting himself into deeper and deeper shit, using money he should be using to pay standing debts to place even more gambling bets. This guy can’t help himself, not even after threatening goons hang him upside down out a high window.

Are you wondering how Kevin Garnett comes into play? Well, he ultimately is a sort of patron of Howard’s jewelry establishment, and he develops a superstitious attachment to the stone full of gems from Ethiopia, which Howard has procured through shady means and is convinced it is worth a lot more than it probably really is. I can imagine basketball fans, and particularly fans of Kevin Garnett, will regard this element of the story as a kick in the pants.

So much focus is put on basketball in play, because Howard places bets on it, that my own personal interest wanes. I might even go so far as to say that if basketball bores you, much of this movie will as well. On the other hand, the Safdie Brothers effectively transcend the whole basketball thing with this movie, because that is just part of the context, in this story about a man who cannot stop gambling, even in the face of personal ruin.

There are other things to love on this movie, such as the obviousness of Howard’s gambling problem, but no character ever discusses it directly, or says anything so obvious as “You have a problem.” Not even Howard’s wife (a nearly unrecognizable Idina Menzel), or his young mistress (Julia Fox). It is made clear that Howard and Dinah are preparing to tell the kids they will be separating. We can already see plainly why.

Sandler’s Jewish heritage has always been a key part of his persona, and it plays heavily here as well, with Howard being from a large, Jewish family. Judd Hirsch plays his father; Eric Bogosian is Howard’s brother-in-law (evidently husband to one of his sisters, I think), and also one of the men resorting to threats to procure gambling debts. In addition to Garnett, The Weeknd also plays himself, as a talented coke head, in a much smaller part. There is a scene in which he performs. I haven’t even gotten to LaKeith Stanfield, seen in last year’s Sorry to Bother You as well as this year’s Knives Out, in another key part as one of Kevin Garnett’s associates.

Which is to say, the acting is pretty great across the board in Uncut Gems. Even Kevin Garnett, in his feature film debut, holds his own. There’s something to be said for forging a new path in storytelling, and this movie certainly does that, which earns it my respect. The same goes for how it ends, which is somehow both a shock and totally unsurprising. I have to commend a movie that manages to impress me even after it spends far more time on basketball play than I am ever interested in watching.

Insert “diamond in the rough” metaphor here.

Overall: B+