Then sporadically, almost frustratingly, like someone downplaying their hand, Sandler likes to remind the world that he can, in fact, act. In Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Sandler’s trademark gaucherie and social ineptitude are honed into an affecting, addled lover. In Reign On Me (2007), he tenderly evokes a grief-stricken father who has lost his family on 9/11. And in Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerwitz Stories (2017), Sandler gives a striking performance that The New York Times called ‘a revelation’. So it makes sense that for Uncut Gems, directors Josh and Benny Safdie with Ronald Bernstein wrote the part of Howard Ratner, the film’s central character, specifically for Sandler. It’s a role enmeshing polar extremes of his repertoire: a knack for obnoxious male protagonists, and an emotional complexity performed in dramatic settings with depth and rigour.

Adam Sandler as Howard Ratner in Uncut Gems (photograph via Netflix)

Uncut Gems begins frantically, as if partway through a heated argument, and one has to pay attention to avoid being left behind. Ratner – the name itself verminous – is a Jewish jewelry merchant slinging stones in Manhattan’s diamond district (home turf of the Safdie brothers). His frenetic life turns on a dime’s edge. He is estranged from his wife Dinah (Idina Menzel), dating his much younger employee Julia (Julia Fox), and is largely absent from the lives of his three children. Ratner is also an addictive gambler with a penchant for pawning things he’s stolen, borrowing money he can’t repay, and placing generous bets with slim chances of success.

As a result, he is hounded by debt collectors, most threateningly by two baleful goons who work for Arnold (Eric Bogosian), Ratner’s loan-shark brother-in-law. As a hoped-for salve, Ratner manages (somehow) to smuggle into New York a rare Ethiopian black opal – an iridescent, somewhat phallic-looking gem – which he plans to sell for a lavish amount. The opal comes to the attention of one of Ratner’s customers, basketballer Kevin Garnett (playing himself), who asks to borrow it to bring him good luck in an upcoming game. Ratner reluctantly agrees; to no one’s surprise, this bodes badly. The resulting mayhem culminates in a final scene, with Ratner, literally boxed in, holding out for one final payoff.

Money, and the pernicious desire for it, is the driving impetus of Ratner’s life. It’s a similar undercurrent to the Safdie brothers’ previous feature film Good Time (2017) – starring Robert Patterson as a stumblebum larcenist – with cash being inherent to the film’s central conflict. If, amid the film’s utter chaos, Uncut Gems is ‘about’ anything, it’s the systemic influence of currency and the cyclic, all-consuming nature of addiction. At the heart of a gambler is an eternal optimist, as the saying goes, but with Ratner, all that sits behind his gaze is the endless pursuit: an empty hall of smoke and mirrors that starts and ends nowhere. (During an early scene, the camera even takes us into the depths of the black opal’s multi-coloured interior, which then transmogrifies into the insides of Ratner during a colonoscopy.)

Julia Fox as Julia in Uncut Gems (photograph via Netflix)

Technically, the cinematography by Darius Khondji (Seven, Midnight in Paris) is excellent, a finely edited combination of visually discordant scenes, uncomfortable close-ups, and a slew of fast-paced action shots throughout New York City. The score, the atypical, Eno-like electronica of Daniel Lopatin – aka Oneohtrix Point Never – is an unearthly soundtrack of synthesizers and choral samples, a perfect complement to the film’s unrelenting mania. The film’s moments of weakness are its attempts at social commentary, loosely sowing together its Hollywood-esque opening scene – Ethiopian miners unearthing Ratner’s black opal – with Kevin Garnett later chastising Ratner for buying the opal for a pittance. The ethical dimension of economic inequality feels tacked on, an afterthought, and given the film’s frantic pace and convoluted plot, it falls somewhat roadside. Also puzzling is Julia’s undying adoration for Ratner, who treats her terribly. It smacks of Sandler’s cheesy comedies, with women inexplicably horny for him despite so many red flags. Perhaps she, like Ratner, is just in it for the rush.

Watching Uncut Gems is an exercise in anxiety. Ratner makes one terrible decision after another with increasingly chaotic intensity. It’s difficult to pity him: he’s a terrible father, husband, partner, boss, friend, and human being. For some people, the film’s stomach-churning angst will be far from entertaining – afterwards, you may feel like lying down somewhere dark and quiet. For others, this reviewer included, the pandemonium is mesmeric. It is a film with a unique atmosphere, one of ostentation and rising bedlam. Whatever your taste is, it’s hard to dispute that Sandler imbues Ratner with an unforgettable authenticity (one that should have been Oscar-nominated), a bravura display illustrating the frenetic chase of the big pay-out.

Uncut Gems, directed by Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie, is available on Netflix.