Movie Review: Uncut Gems(2019)- A Tale of Misfortune

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Personal Rating: 8/10
IMDb Rating: 7.6/10
Tomatometer: 92%
Audience: 52%

Directors: Safdie Brothers
Cast: Adam Sandler, Julia Fox..
Genre: Drama, Crime, Dark Comedy.

Adam Sandler. This name only brought back memories of cheesy, silly and sometimes idiotic acting he did in Grown Ups, Click, Anger Management or Hotel Transylvania filled with fart and bad sex jokes. From all the movies I can recall, I only saw him play a serious in only this one, Uncut Gems.

I had just finished watching the “It” 1 and 2. It was a rainy night. So a horror movie went with the setting perfectly. After finishing it I was kind of unsettled. Horror movies aren’t my Forte but I do love books of this respective genre. As in one of my teen summers, I binge read three books of Stephen King in two days. Pennywise became my favorite character to fascinate about that summer. Seeing the movie poster now and all the hype around it made me nostalgic. And so I watched it but not being a fan of jump scares made the experience unpleasant, unlike the books.

To cleanse my pallet, I started going through my watch list and this came before my way. I watched it purely to laugh at the poor acting. And oh my, was I blown away.

!!SPOILER ALERT!!

Howard Ratner, a jeweler based in new work entangles himself in a situation so complex and so unfunny that you had to laugh on his misfortune.

Adam Sandler as Howard Ratner

Misfortune One: A famous Basketball player, Kevin Garnett, comes to visit Howard’s shop, KMH in the request of Demany, a sort of evangelist for the shop. At the same time, A package containing a black opal worth a million with dark origins were delivered to him. Immediately after seeing the stone, Garnett becomes obsessed with it. He insists Howard loan it to him as he’s sort of a superstitious person (Don’t know anything about him in real life) and believes in stones to manipulate luck. So after much discussion, Howard allows Garnett to take the stone in return for his “lucky” championship ring.

The next night, as Garnett is playing, Howard pawned the ring, took the money and put a bet on him winning. He does win a large sum but at the exact moment Phil and Nico, goons sent by the loan shark he owed, arrives and beats the shit out of Howard. Then tells him that they stopped the bet from placing and Howard didn’t win anything. As the loan shark Arno, who Is also the brother-in-law of Howard, tells him that they saw him putting a bet while not repaying the debt. So Howard is now left with jack shit.

Kevin Garnett, Demany and Howard

Misfortune Two: The opal is later returned by Garnett. While returning, He offers Howard to buy the stone for 175 thousand dollars. Howard declines as the stone is appraised to be worth a million. He made his mind to put it in the auction. Garnett decides to acquire it from there.

Just before the auction, Howard finds that the opal isn’t worth that much and has been appraised for far less. So he begs his rich father-in-law, Gooey to drive the price by bidding on it. While bidding Garnett, the only other buyer for the stone stops too early. And Howard just bought his stone himself.

Misfortune Three: Despite all the phony behaviors, Garnett is still willing to buy it off. Howard sells it and just after getting the money, he bets it again on the Celtics playing that night. And at the same time, Arno and his goons come back again. But Howard traps them in the malfunctioning airlock door. While they sit there for hours, making them angrier, he wins the bet. A happy Howard lets the goons out of there, and Phil shoots him in the head.

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All the while watching this, I was rooting for Howard to get out of this messy situation. He being in a complicated state with his wife, Finding out that his mistress is snorting Cocaine with The Weekend (he cameoed) and the goons beating him three times and all the other things made it irritating and chaotic. It was like an acid trip. Adam Sandler delivered his career-best performance which I was not prepared to see. The Safdie brothers made a wonderful dark comedy that felt like a dream inside a crackhead’s mind. A heavy metal song made into a movie might feel like this I believe.

This might be in my top ten lists for the movies of 2019. It was exhilarating to see so many things happening at once and it made me pucker. None the less, it’s not a movie for everybody and it’s also R rated, contains too many pervasive vulgarities. So watch it at your own decision.

If you want to watch it its now up and available on netflix. Thank you for reading this. Any feedback is very appreciated.