If it hits, Howard will be home free, at least for now. Howard, who’s just as bonkers as Garnett and is increasingly powerless to stop his life from spiraling out of control, makes a huge bet contingent on the Celtics winning - AND Garnett scoring points by the bushelful and grabbing a ton of rebounds. He’s going to hang onto the opal just a little while longer. Garnett goes on to have a monster game, and he truly believes it’s because the opal has magic powers. He’ll even let Howard hang on to his NBA championship ring as collateral. But when Garnett and entourage visit Howard’s store while the Celtics are in town to take on the Knicks, Garnett is instantly mesmerized by the opal and asks if he can borrow it for a few days.
Howard thinks it could be worth maybe a million dollars when he puts it up for auction in a few days. You see, there’s this uncut gem of a stone studded with black opals, newly arrived from Ethiopia.
Uncut gems true story movie#
It’s one of the best pieces of real acting by an athlete in recent movie history. Playing a heightened version of himself, Garnett is nothing short of sensational. Garnett, who went straight from Farragut Career Academy High School on the West Side of Chicago to the NBA draft, was one of the most imposing figures the game ever saw he’s also kind of … out there.
The precise time period is an integral part of the story, allowing the retired basketball great Kevin Garnett to play the 2012 version of Kevin Garnett, a star power forward with the Boston Celtics. He can barely keep up with his own bull. Whether Howard is behind the counter at his store (which has the atmosphere of a chop shop combined with a high-end flea market) hawking a gaudy chain with a hideously glittering Furby, trying to smooth things over with his wife Dinah (Idina Menzel) OR his mistress Julia (Julia Fox), ditching a couple of menacing tough guys or selling a story to the bookie who says time is running out and Howard better come through with the cash, this guy is always on the run in one form or another. Sandler’s Howard Ratner is a hulking, goateed, leather-jacketed, bling-wearing jeweler who makes no bones about who he is - a hustler through and through. “Uncut Gems” is set in the recent past of 2012, in New York City. Lurking around every corner of his life is the very real possibility he’ll be caught having an affair, get beaten up by a bookie’s thugs or mess up a business deal - or maybe he’ll just collapse on the spot, with the cause of death being Overall Degenerate Lifestyle. It is the story of a man who is in a constant state of high anxiety. It has the urgent look and jagged style of early Martin Scorsese films such as “Mean Streets.” (In fact, Scorsese is one of the producers of this film.) “Uncut Gems” is part psychological thriller, part black comedy, part thriller and part dysfunctional extended family drama - and it clicks on all those cylinders. It’s certainly deserving of an Oscar nod.
It might just be the best dramatic performance by an actor in all of 2019. Opens Tuesday at local theaters.Īdam Sandler’s performance as a New York jeweler with a variety of voracious appetites, who has spent most of his adult life trying to beat the bookies (spoiler alert - you’re never going to beat the bookies in the long run), ranks right up there the work of Steve McQueen in “The Cincinnati Kid,” Edward Norton and Matt Damon in “Rounders,” George Segal and Elliott Gould in “California Split” and James Caan in “The Gambler.” Rated R (for pervasive strong language, violence, some sexual content and brief drug use). A24 presents a film written and directed by Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie.
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