Ride Around Shining

I don’t know how else to tell you what Adam Sandler does for a living, or is it amusement, in Uncut Gems. He owns a store whose look and feel wouldn’t look out of place in a quaint lease along Cha Cha Cha. In that store, he cultivates and monetises a passion for discovering precious minerals. He sometimes uses those precious minerals to place dangerous bets on sports teams, and then he uses those bets to initiate other gambles with other assets. It’s like Howard Ratner, Sandler’s character, is a walking, talking, cursing, pursing credit crunch, hedging volatile investments against one another and pissing off a lot of people in the process.

Howard comes into possession of a rare Ethiopian gem, a chunky rock that opens our movie with bright colours glistening off its every edge. It looks like a piece of meteor, or like it could light up a disco-house in the 80s, which Josh and Bennie Safdie - who co-direct - intone quite deliberately. Shortly after it enters Howard’s care, the gem catches the attention of a superstar basketball player: the Boston Celtics’ very own Kevin Garnett!, who believes it’s enhancing his on-court performance. No sports league regulates against that sort of thing … so when Garnett’s in-game numbers do go up, Howard is quick to place large money on his stats.

Howard’s social circle, of course, is full of people he has pissed or is pissing off. He owes friends and family money. He’s gambled his own way out of marriage to a woman who can’t wait to divorce him. He’s about to gamble his way out of a fairly productive relationship with another woman. He takes Kevin Garnett’s championship ring, a relic of recent glory, and uses that as collateral for more unnecessary debt. Howard gets so high off short-changing people and making dumb excuses that you can’t help but hope he never runs out of rope. That becomes your viewing experience, and it’s delicious and enthralling.

Maybe what you root for is the remote possibility that one big win will give Howard a reason to stop being a danger to himself - or at least keep his family out of an increasingly precarious mix. It’s an unusual vantage point, just watching your protagonist make a fatal ass of himself, but gosh what a vantage point. Uncut Gems is full of light, in both day and night scenes - as though it too has been lifted from the earth, and is now being thrust or grabbed or prized from one set of hands by another, repeatedly.

There’s a lot of context to unpack if you hold the fun facts nearby. Sandler, in real life and in Gems, is a die-hard New York Knicks fan and so are the Safdie brothers; but Howard isn’t so reckless as to gamble on those walruses (LMFAO). Real-life Kevin Garnett won his ring with the Celtics over a decade ago, so this film effectively counts as a period piece - but what’s The Weeknd (a popular musician in the 21st Century) doing trying to steal Howard’s girl in the year 2009?

None of this matters, and neither does the fact that the Safdies are part of the reason Robert Pattinson will make a very good Batman. But it’s all wonderful to have, like (um) dessert. The voice of New York sports radio Mike Francesca not wanting any more of Howard’s nonsense; Kevin freaking Garnett, one of basketball’s meanest dudes ever, banking all his super-powers on a hunch. Who would’ve thought a seedy jeweller could unite all of these delightful fantasies, and be so darn loveable in the process?

I’m watching it all over again, soon, so we can trade notes about our favourite scenes.

Uncut Gems is available to stream on Netflix right now.