Uncut Gems

Uncut Gems is a 2019 American crime thriller film directed by Josh and Benny Safdie, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ronald Bronstein. It stars Adam Sandler, LaKeith Stanfield, Julia Fox, Kevin Garnett, Idina Menzel, and Eric Bogosian. The film tells the story of Howard Ratner (Sandler), a Jewish-American jeweler and gambling addict in New York City's Diamond District, who must retrieve an expensive gem he purchased in order to pay off his debts. Filming took place from September to November 2018. The original score was composed by Daniel Lopatin. Uncut Gems was the last film by the Safdie brothers before they dissolved their partnership in 2024.
The film premiered at the 46th Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2019. A24 gave it a limited release in the United States on December 13, 2019, and a wide release on December 25. Uncut Gems was a box office success and received acclaim, especially for Sandler's against-type performance, which several reviewers described as the best of his career. The film was chosen by the National Board of Review as one of the top ten films of 2019.
In May 2012, Howard Ratner runs the KMH jewelry store in New York City's Diamond District. Although Howard has a well-paying job, his habits are even more expensive. He has a gambling addiction, a fancy house on Long Island for his wife Dinah, a pied-à-terre apartment in Manhattan for his mistress Julia, and a swimming pool that needs resurfacing. Dinah is fed up with his antics and plans to divorce him after Passover.
Howard has borrowed $100,000 from Arno, a loan shark, which he has used to purchase a 600-carat black opal from Ethiopia's Welo mine, which he has smuggled to America. Arno sends two hired goons, Phil and Nico, to accost him at his shop over the money owed to him. Howard attempts to extend Arno's deadline to Monday, when the opal is set for auction, as Howard believes it can be sold for as high as $1 million.
Howard's business associate Demany brings basketball star Kevin Garnett to KMH. Garnett becomes enamored by the opal and believes it will bring him good luck at his playoff game that night. He promises to give the opal back that night, giving Howard his 2008 NBA Championship ring as collateral. Howard quickly pawns the ring to feed his gambling addiction. He places a six-way parlay worth $600,000, betting that Garnett will play well. Garnett dominates. However, he angers Howard by keeping the opal.
The following evening, Howard is ambushed at his daughter's school play by Arno, Phil, and Nico. Arno tells him that he stopped the bet and lectures him about his reckless spending. The loan sharks strip Howard naked and lock him in the trunk of his car, forcing him to call Dinah for help.
Howard meets Demany at a nightclub party hosted by R&B singer the Weeknd to retrieve the opal, only to find that Garnett still has it. Howard catches Julia with the Weeknd in the club bathroom and believes they were having sex. He fights the Weeknd and orders Julia to leave his apartment.
Garnett returns the opal to Howard and resolves to buy it at the upcoming auction. He asks for his ring back, but Howard lies that he left it at home. Later, Howard berates Demany for allowing Garnett to hold onto the opal for so long. Enraged, Demany trashes Howard's office and poisons his fish tank. After an awkward Passover family dinner, where it is revealed that Arno is Howard's brother-in-law, Dinah rejects Howard's plea to give their marriage another chance. On the drive back home, Howard stops at the apartment. His son, accompanying him, finds out through one of the other tenants that he had a "pretty woman" also staying in his apartment.
The auction house shocks Howard by valuing the opal at just $155,000. To salvage the situation, Howard tries to scam Garnett by recruiting his father-in-law Gooey to submit fake bids to drive up the price. Gooey bids up Garnett to $180,000, but Howard greedily pushes for more, prompting Garnett to back out. Enraged by Howard's bungling, Arno, Phil, and Nico assault him outside the auction house.
Howard returns to KMH, bloody, hopeless, and in tears. Julia comforts him and they reconcile. He retrieves Garnett's ring from the pawn shop but is late, and forced to exchange his prized 1973 Knicks ring for it. Garnett visits KMH to pick up the ring and confront Howard about his auction scheme. Howard explains that he has an emotional need to chase the next big score. He is already planning his next big bet, and uses the confrontation to motivate Garnett to dominate the next game.
Garnett pays Howard $165,000 for the opal, but once again, Howard gambles the money on a speculative Garnett-focused parlay instead of clearing his debts. To prevent the bet, Arno, Phil, and Nico visit KMH to threaten Howard. Howard recruits Julia to sneak out the cash and place the bet at the Mohegan Sun casino. He then traps the loan sharks inside the store's security doors and forces them to watch the game with him.
Garnett comes through again, earning Howard $1.2 million. Ecstatic, Howard frees Arno and his men, but an enraged Phil kills Howard and Arno, and begins looting the store with Nico. Julia collects Howard's winnings, while Dinah calls the police, suspecting something is amiss.
John Amos, Ca$h Out, and Trinidad James appear as themselves, with Amos appearing as Howard's neighbor and the others as acquaintances of Demany. Tilda Swinton and Natasha Lyonne have vocal cameos as the auction manager and a Celtics staff member, respectively. Celtics head coach Doc Rivers wrote and delivered a voiceover pep talk for the film. Pom Klementieff has a brief cameo as Lexis, a friend of Julia who greets Howard outside his Manhattan apartment during the opening credits.
Josh and Benny Safdie came up with the idea of a Diamond District movie in 2009, influenced by their father's stories of working as a diamond salesman. Co-writer Ronald Bronstein came from a similar background, as his father worked in the Garment District. Their shared Jewish upbringing was essential to their crafting of the film. The Safdies explained that "the film is about belonging," but it is also "about cheating God." Slate called the film "the most Jewish movie in years." IndieWire's David Ehrlich quipped that "Uncut Gems is the movie that Jews were promised in the Torah. Uncut Gems is gonna be the theme of my son's bar mitzvah."
When creating the character of Howard, the Safdies were heavily influenced by Jewish humor and actors from the 20th century. Howard has been likened to a schlimazel, a stock Jewish humor character marked by his poor luck, or a schlemiel, marked by his ineptitude and clumsiness, although the Village Voice's J. Hoberman argued that Howard's shamelessness precludes the latter comparison. Indeed, the Safdies wanted Howard to encompass Jewish stereotypes proudly and to treat them as a "superpower," adding that "it was very important to make Howard a strong guy who doesn't back down." Josh Safdie explained that one of his goals was to "prov[e] that people can look beyond a flaw. ... That's why the movie is called 'Uncut Gems.' Uncut gems are rough things that are considered ugly by most people, but when you scope them out and get underneath you can find the beauty and value in them."
The Jewish concept of "learning through suffering" was also important for the character throughout the story. In a round-table hosted by Jewish Currents, David Klion argued that "the overriding effect that the movie seems to have on virtually everyone who sees it is one of intense anxiety, which feels like a very Jewish theme." Arielle Angel noted that Howard embodies a combination of "insecurity plus power," and that Howard's Jewishness leaves him "white enough to have access," while still leaving him "with this immigrant hustler mentality."
The Safdies designed Howard's character to channel Jewish "stereotypes that were forced onto us in the Middle Ages, when ... [Jews'] only way of accruing status as an individual, as a person who was considered a human being, was through material consumption." Production designer Sam Lisenco worked with the Safdies to draw a picture of a new-money striver who, despite his wealth, retains the trashy tastes of his childhood. Lisenco noted that Howard insists on buying expensive-but-dated items that he could not afford when he was younger, like the Sony Trinitron television in his Manhattan apartment, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, and large fish tanks. The Ringer's Katie Baker described the overall effect as "a study in tacky midtownish entropy."
In May 2016, it was announced that the Safdies were going to direct the film from a screenplay they wrote alongside Bronstein, and that the Safdies' company Elara Pictures and RT Features would produce, with Emma Tillinger Koskoff and Martin Scorsese serving as executive producers. In May 2017, the Safdies announced that Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, and Sebastian Bear-McClard would produce the film, and A24 would distribute it. Netflix acquired the international distribution rights.
The Safdies initially approached Adam Sandler to star in 2010 and 2015, but Sandler's manager rejected the script before Sandler got a chance to read it. Once Scorsese agreed to executive produce the film, actors started taking the film more seriously. Jonah Hill was cast as Howard in May 2017, but dropped out to direct Mid90s. In April 2018, Sandler finally agreed to play Howard after watching the Safdies' film Good Time. Other actors considered for the role included Sacha Baron Cohen, Harvey Keitel, and James Caan.
Eric Bogosian, Judd Hirsch, LaKeith Stanfield, and Idina Menzel joined the project in August and September 2018. Three hundred actresses auditioned for the role of Julia, and the names of Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lawrence, Scarlett Johansson, and Kim Kardashian were thrown around; but the role eventually went to Julia Fox.
For the role of the basketball player, Kevin Garnett was cast in September 2018. Kobe Bryant, Amar'e Stoudemire, and Joel Embiid were also considered for Garnett's role. The Safdies had originally written the part with Bryant in mind, and planned to focus the game on the day that Bryant broke the Madison Square Garden single-game scoring record. However, Bryant's agent said that Bryant was only interested in directing. They were also drawn to Stoudemire due to his joint black and Jewish heritage, as well as his years starring with the New York Knicks, the Safdies' favorite basketball team. (Josh Safdie joked that "There's a strong correlation with Judaism and Knicks basketball ... it has to do with suffering and trying to understand your life.") However, Stoudemire refused to shave his head to mirror his Knicks-era look. Embiid initially agreed to join the film, but he was forced to drop out when the Safdies moved filming to the basketball season. The Safdies began to look at retired players, and settled on Garnett, even though Garnett's Celtics and the Knicks have a historic rivalry.
In October 2018, it was revealed that the Weeknd, Trinidad James, and Pom Klementieff had joined the cast. The Weeknd specifically requested to play the role as an egotistical punk, admitting that that was how he treated people in 2012. Klementieff's scenes, apart from a brief cameo during the opening credits, were removed from the final film.
Principal photography began on September 25, 2018, in New York City, and concluded on November 15. The film was shot by Darius Khondji, primarily on 35 mm film, using vintage anamorphic prime and long zoom lenses. Night sequences were filmed using the Arri Alexa Mini camera outfitted with the same pairing of lens types. O'Kiep, South Africa doubled as the Welo mine in Ethiopia, but real Ethiopians were cast as extras. For verisimilitude, the filmmakers borrowed real footage from Garnett's NBA games, assuming that it qualified as fair use.
The opening and closing sequences were inspired by the gemological photomicrography of Eduard Gübelin and Danny J. Sanchez.
Daniel Lopatin composed the film's original score. He also recorded several songs with the Weeknd for the film, but they went unused; however, he has production credits on the Weeknd's 2020 album, After Hours. A soundtrack album of Lopatin's music for the film was released on December 13, 2019, on CD, vinyl, and digital streaming services.
Uncut Gems had its world premiere at the 46th Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2019. It later screened at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, and at the 57th New York Film Festival on October 12. It received a limited theatrical release in the United States on December 13, before its nationwide release on December 25. The film was released internationally on Netflix on January 31, 2020, and it began streaming on the service in the United States on May 25, 2020.
The Criterion Collection acquired the rights to distribute the film on home video, and issued a physical release in 2021. The Safdie brothers rented and ripped Criterion discs from Netflix growing up; Josh Safdie said that being acquired by Criterion felt like sneaking into a museum.
The first weekend of its limited release, the film made $537,242 from five theaters; its per-venue average of $107,448 was the highest ever for A24 and the second-best of any film released in 2019. It made $241,431 its second weekend in theaters.
The film made $5.9 million on the first day of its wide release (including $1.1 million from previews on Christmas Eve), which was the highest single-day gross in A24's history. It went on to make a total of $18.5 million over the five-day long holiday weekend ($9.6 million of which was during the weekend-proper), finishing sixth at the box office. In its second weekend of wide release, the film made $7.5 million, finishing eighth at the box office. By the end of its theatrical run, the film had earned $50 million, and it was A24's highest-grossing film domestically until it was surpassed by Everything Everywhere All at Once in May 2022.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 91% based on 351 reviews, with an average score of 8.4/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "Uncut Gems reaffirms the Safdies as masters of anxiety-inducing cinema—and proves Adam Sandler remains a formidable dramatic actor when given the right material." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 93 out of 100 based on reviews by 56 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore during the film's limited release gave it an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale. However, when CinemaScore re-polled audiences following the film's wide release, its score declined to "C+", and the film received an average score of 2 out of 5 stars on PostTrak.
Sandler's performance received critical acclaim, with some commentators calling it the best of his career. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that "Many will agree that this is Sandler's best performance, and the Safdies will finally move from the fringes of the commercial film scene to somewhere closer to the center." Sandler was talked up as a possible Academy Award for Best Actor nominee. On The Howard Stern Show, he joked that if he did not win an Oscar, he would make the "worst movie ever ... so bad on purpose just to make you all pay." After learning that he had not been nominated, he congratulated Kathy Bates—his former co-star in The Waterboy (1998)—on her Best Supporting Actress nomination, and joked that he finally "can stop wearing suits."
Eric Kohn of IndieWire gave the film a grade of "A", calling it "a riveting high-wire act, pairing cosmic visuals with the gritty energy of a dark psychological thriller and sudden bursts of frantic comedy". Jake Cole of Slant Magazine gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, writing: "As in Good Time, Uncut Gems finds the Safdies working in a genre rooted in the grimy, character-oriented crime films of the '70s." Radheyan Simonpillai of Now commented that "there's so much propulsive, forward momentum even when the characters never get anywhere." In her round-up of the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, Wendy Ide of The Guardian ranked Uncut Gems as one of the best films of the year, calling it "Audacious, thrilling and exhausting", describing Sandler's "remarkable performance" as one of the best performances of the year, and praising the cinematography.
Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times said: "Directed with relentless tension and diamond-hard intelligence by Josh and Benny Safdie (who earlier this month won directing honors from the New York Film Critics Circle), Uncut Gems is a thriller and a character study, a tragedy and a blast." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called the film "a cinema of pure energy and grungy voltage, and the Safdies make it look very easy. This will be the year's most exciting film."
The soundtrack and sound editing were acclaimed. Jon Caramanica of the New York Times wrote that "there is no opportunity for sonic escape in 'Uncut Gems,' a film that often sounds like it is itself taking in three movies at once. The thrum of the thing is massive, varied and thick — the noise of the city, a paranoid score, and sometimes you even hear the dialogue."
Kevin Garnett's performance was also praised, with Brady Langmann of Esquire calling it the year's best breakout performance, and Alan Siegel writing on The Ringer that it was "one of the best acting performances by an athlete ever."
According to a list compiled by Metacritic, Uncut Gems was included on the fifth-most year-end "Top Ten" lists of the best films of 2019 that were published by major film critics and publications.
The A.V. Club ranked Uncut Gems as the 92nd-best film of the 2010s.
Uncut Gems was a large influence on developing the visual language and camera work in the Pixar film Inside Out 2, and many of its elements were used in the film. The film's main characters are personifications of the feelings of Riley, a teenage girl, and Uncut Gems influenced the framing of Anxiety's scenes, particularly when Anxiety takes charge of Riley's brain.
The film received praise from Diamond District workers for its accurate portrayal of the industry and the high-stress setting, although various workers noted that certain aspects of Howard's character were exaggerated for dramatic effect, including his gambling addiction, his large debts, and his willingness to evade anti-smuggling laws. Several real-life industry figures received cameos in the film.
Uncut Gems was the last feature film by the Safdie brothers before they dissolved their partnership in 2024, although the brothers also collaborated with Sandler on the short film Goldman v. Silverman (2020). The brothers had previously been working on a follow-up film that also starred Sandler, but Benny dropped out. He emphasized that Josh would continue to work on the film and that he had not made significant contributions during pre-production. Following the split, Josh turned his attention to a different project, Marty Supreme, starring Timothée Chalamet, and shot a Netflix comedy special with Sandler.