In the early days of FedEx, founder Fred Smith faced a serious cash-flow problem. The company was millions of dollars in start-up debt. Pilots were purchasing fuel with their personal credit cards. Employees were agreeing not to cash their paychecks, knowing they would bounce anyway. Desperate to stave off bankruptcy, Smith took the company’s last $5,000 to the Las Vegas blackjack tables. He returned in less than a week with $27,000 and used that money to secure additional funding. How could he take such a risk with the last of the company’s cash? He figured he would lose it all in bankruptcy court anyway, so the real risk was in not doing anything.
Uncut Gems shows a different side of gambling—not the glitzy glamour of roulette wheels and craps tables and exciting payoffs but the dirty, violent, addictive side that entices with the promise not of wealth but of the euphoric adrenaline rush during the heady anticipation of winning. For Howie Ratner (Adam Sandler) the desire is all consuming. He has to have that high.
The film’s frenetic, unrelenting pace mirrors Howie’s frenetic, unrelenting mania. The camera follows him from room to room and scene to scene without so much as a pause to orient the audience. Howie is constantly orchestrating a story. He owes everybody, renegotiates with everybody, constantly lies, constantly expects the next big gambling hit to fix everything. The problem is, he doesn’t really want to fix everything, and he isn’t really after the money. Howie gets off on the risk and anticipation, the fear of losing it all and the release of fear when the game comes his way. Gambling is his cocaine. Winning is his euphoria. We don’t see any drug use in Uncut Gems, yet the movie is a story of free-wheeling addiction.
Howie runs a jewelry store with an off-the books, second-hand business in the back. As the movie opens he is working a deal to sell a 4,000-carat uncut black opal from Ethiopia through a Manhattan auction house. He expects to garner a million dollars on the deal. But he also has a short-term commitment with a loan shark that needs to be fixed today. So he uses the opal to solve several problems at once. He entices Kevin Garnett (yes, the basketball star, playing himself) to believe that the opal can give him good luck and then, taking Garnett’s NBA ring as collateral in exchange for letting Garnett keep the opal overnight, Howie pawns the ring for cash, sends a photo of the cash to a loan shark implying he is on his way to pay the loan, shakes off the heavies of another loan shark by giving them a fake Rolex, heads to his bookie where he uses the money from Garnett’s ring to bet on Garnett and the Celtics, and then settles into the gambler’s euphoria as he watches the game that night, where Garnett is in top form because of his new talisman. All in a day’s work.
But Howie doesn’t have time for the big hustle. Every plan has to be made on the fly. He’s entirely short-term oriented, because every moment could be his last. We feel his rising panic as he deals with big-time loan sharks and big-time enforcers who could kill or maim him at any moment. (Howie’s poorly capped teeth suggest an enforcer has taught him a lesson in the past, although how he lost his original teeth is never mentioned.) Like every compulsive gambler, he believes his plan will work and that the next big win is as good as in his hands. Then he’ll pay everyone off and everything will be fine.
Like many gambling addicts, Howie is a family man. He was once the kind of guy who takes out the recycling on Wednesday night, recites the prayers at Passover, and attends his kid’s school play. And he still does all that. But he’s always distracted by his latest bet and yesterday’s collectors. If he just happens to end up in the trunk of his car, stripped naked and calling his wife (Idina Menzel) to push the trunk-open button from the auditorium door during his daughter’s school play, so be it. She doesn’t even ask him what happened.
Howie is desperate but not hopeless, and therein lies the key to his character. Hope drives him. In that sense he is the eternal optimist. He’ll do anything, pawn anything, and promise anything to get out of the current jam and into the euphoria of a big score. The more cons he has going and the greater the risk, the higher he gets. Desperation is foreplay for him, and watching a game on which he has a big bet is orgasmic. It isn’t even about the money. When he wins big, he needs sex. But not with his wife. He needs Julia (Julia Fox), the beautiful mistress living in his downtown apartment. No wonder both are called scoring.
The camera work and musical score reflect Howie’s relentless mood. Usually dark, gritty and fast-paced, the music changes to a dreamy, jazzy arrangement whenever Howie is winning, to reflect his momentary euphoria. The lighting also brightens just a bit in those moments—not enough to be cheesy, but enough that you start to notice it after a while. The Safdie Brothers’ direction is controlled and masterful, even as Howie’s story is frenetically spinning out of control. This frenzy spills into the audience, as the nearly 2 1/2 hour film feels like 90 minutes. Kevin Garnett, too, is a revelation, delivering a believable performance that comes from deep within his soul, not sitting statically in front of his eyes as happens with most sports figures who are called on to play themselves. Garnett’s acting coach should have a separate listing in the credits.
Uncut Gems is a filmmaker’s film, and Sandler has come a long way from his silly Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison days. This isn’t his first foray away from comedy; he delivered excellent dramatic performances in Punch Drunk Love (2002) and Spanglish (2004). But Uncut Gems is his most impressive—gritty, manic and unrelenting as it follows the life of a crazed gambler who just can’t get enough. After Daniel Day Lewis saw it, he called Sandler to congratulate him on his tour-de-force performance. Daniel Day Lewis!! I wouldn’t call it entertaining and I’m not sure you, dear reader, would enjoy it. But when funny-man Adam Sandler, whose most recent films have gone straight to Netflix, wins the Oscar for Best Actor, at least you’ll know why.
Uncut Gems, Benny and Josh Safdie, directors. Elara Pictures, 2019, 135 minutes. View trailer here.
Jo Ann Skousen is the founder director of the Anthem Libertarian Film Festival, which meets at the Paris Resort Las Vegas July 13-16, 2020.
