210 - Uncut Gems

Independent filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie team up with Adam Sandler for Uncut Gems, an energetic, evolving crime thriller set in Manhattan's Diamond District. By the time we meet Sandler's Jewish jeweller, Howard, he's already embedded within a web of competing interests, desires and debts, as well as a gambling addiction - and the tension only mounts as problems grow worse. The Safdie brothers and Sandler are all Jewish New York natives, the writer-directors in particular growing up, in part, around the Diamond District, where their father worked. There's a specificity to the location and culture that the film captures beautifully, a richness to Howard's characterisation, and the world he inhabits, that feels authentically observed. Howard's need to take risks never allows the tension to settle - he can't help but invite further trouble upon himself, so neither does the film let us calm down for a second. Uncut Gems is a complex, character-oriented, engrossing work of edge-of-your-seat genre entertainment, and a terrific follow-up to the Safdies' 2017 thriller Good Time, which we discuss a little bit (but not too much because José hasn't finished it yet). Both Good Time and Uncut Gems are available on Netflix, and well worth your time. The Safdie brothers might not just be good - they might be greats. Recorded on 23rd January 2020.