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Adam Sandler is desperate to make a score in Uncut Gems |
The Safdie brothers’ film is an explosion of frantic energy.
Shot with hand-held dynamism and cut with adrenalin-fuelled quickness, every scene
has life occurring at hundreds of miles an hour, leaving the viewer struggling
to keep up. Like Robert Altman walking in Scorsese land, dialogue frequently
overlaps, with the buzz of improvisation and rawness of language. The film rips
through events with a headlong force, scenes veering from black comedy, to
tragedy to violence with unexpected force.
There is an almost Jonsonian or Moliere sprightliness about
the film. Ratner feels like a Volpone, a chancer on the make, trying to keep
ahead of his schemes long enough to end out on top. The film plays like a dark
farce. Often, at the worst possible moments, Ratner’s opponents or friends
appear to ruin his current plan. Ratner’s shop is practically a classic farce
set, with its backrooms and magnetically controlled door that doesn’t always
open when ordered. But it’s a dark farce, which never lets you forget the threat
of genuine physical violence.
The Safdie brothers take a superb chance on casting Adam
Sandler. With his gallery of grotesques in a low-brow comedies, it’s easy to
forget the commitment and transformational quality Sandler brings to any role.
With the film teetering towards dark farce, that energy is perfect. Sandler
channels the bombast of Al Pacino by way of the sleaze of Gilbert Gottfried, a
raspy voiced would-be-but-never-was, a Del Boy of low-rent crime. It’s a high
octane, big performance. But it works because Sandler is aware this is a
character always performing, and has taken on a persona of such New York
Jewishness (the Safdie brothers have said this was their intention) that it
almost feels like his true emotional self has been long buried.
He’s a character who struggles with earnestness and honesty
– partly because it brings so few benefits to his world, partly because he’s
almost forgotten how to behave other than as the high-octane chancer he
presents to the world. In many ways, this is very secure role for Sandler,
falling very much into his wheelhouse without the crude gags, but with
additional tears. Heavily praised by critics – many of whom perhaps couldn’t
bear to sit through his more conventional film work – it’s a strong
performance, but not a revelation as many suggested. Ratner is an exaggeration
and a tour-de-force, but the real stretch for Sandler is in the smaller,
quieter moments (of which there are few) where Ratner has to confront the emotional
consequences of his appalling choices.
Moments like this are few and far between, amongst the
crazed energy of the bulk of the film, but they carry real impact. It would be
easy for this jet-black crime dramedy to overlook its heart, but it’s certainly
there. Ratner’s relationship with Julia seems to be a typical gold-digger/older
man’s folly, but reveals itself to have far greater depths of emotion than
first appears. Similarly, the feud between Ratner and his wife is just part of
a wider spectrum of genuine affection between them – even if the idea of
continuing the marriage is a joke. Even Ratner and his brother-in-law (a world-weary
Eric Bogasian) have moments of genuine affection, for all the threat of violence.
The real villain of the piece, if there is one, is Ratner’s
own self-destructive streak. He can’t let the chance of a good score pass him
by, and his constant habit of shooting himself in the foot and making the wrong
call have led him to the brink of destruction. Not that the film is keen to
show us too much of this. Interestingly, for a film about a gambling addict,
Ratner’s actual bets have a romantic tendency to come off. In fact, for all
that he is clearly in dire straits, the film shies away from showing the real
damage that addictive gambling can have.
Perhaps it’s because the Safdie brothers clearly feel very
protective towards Ratner. For all his wheeler-dealing desperation, the film
lends him a perverted sense of nobility. We can see him lose out on a big deal,
get punched in the throat, thrown in a fountain and still he keeps on going
(Sandler’s fast talking wildness works wonders here). It’s a flaw in the film
for me, that it’s nervous of looking at this self-destructive individual with
the cold-eyed clarity that the best of the 1970s film this is partly apeing, would
do. It’s a bit like making a film about a drunk, but showing every drinking
session as being a whale of a time.
The film culminates in a final wide-eyed bet, mixed with a
flurried attempted escape from the crooks. The final act throws in some
surprising – and affecting – twists to the tale that stands much of what we
have been watching on its head. The film’s frenetic style might, at times, make
it a hard-watch – it is so eager to impress that it rarely rests but constantly
jumps around like an over-active teenager – but it channels Sandler very
effectively, and has the sort of edge too many other films can only dream of.
Moments try too hard (the bookending shots that burrow, Fincher like, deep into
crevices is a flourish too far), but this is still wire-cracker film-making.
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