The unique genius of the Safdie Bros is that they can put Adam Sandler in one of his best dramatic roles to date and still start the movie with a classic Sandman butthole joke. In Uncut Gems, Sandler plays skeezy jeweler Howard, a Jewish Big Apple resident and compulsive gambler in Manhattan’s Diamond District. We meet Howard via his insides, in the midst of a colonoscopy, and things just get more shit for him from there. Howard owes just about everyone in the city, running up spendy vigs with the local pawn shops, wheeling and dealing with low-rent loansharks, and making sketchy deals with his more mobbed-up acquaintances. Exactly the kind of people you don’t want to owe a penny to.

Partnering with Demany (LaKeith Stanfield), a Rolex-fence and “customer relations” aid, Howard spends every waking moment of his day trying to hit the jackpot. Be that by a huge sale, a big-time gambling hit, or by dodging the various collectors coming after him for money or products owed. He lives for the action, a fact that makes every second of Uncut Gems laced with anxiety, every interaction primed to go in the very worst direction possible.

A neurotic and compulsive gambler, Howard may have hit the score of his life when he invests in a raw black opal smuggled out of Africa, which immediately catches the eye of Boston Celtics player Kevin Garnet (played by the now-retired athlete himself). Garnet sees the jewel as a magic rock of sorts and just has to have it. Between this and Parasite, it seems 2019 is the year of the magic movie rock, and you can prepare for Uncut Gems to head to similarly unpleasant places, either in spite of said magic rock or because of it. Before Howard can collect on his big score, he needs to settle his myriad debts, particularly to distant family member Arno (Eric Bogosian) and his legion of goons. Writer and director combo Benny and Josh Safdie harness an extremely unnerving tone reminiscent of their last film, Good Time, ratcheting up the tension and refusing to relieve it once throughout. The experience is stress-inducing and haunting, the final moments of the film, in particular, threatening to linger with audiences for days to come. Akin to railing a line of ADHD medication, Uncut Gems left me high strung, my brain burning with a cinematic hangover, and that’s precisely the point.

Part of this is the Safdie Bros and writing partner Ronald Bronstein’s frenetic script, which is a word salad of characters yelling over each other, the cadence of the language aggressive and unceasing. The directors allow the dialogue to take on an abrasive musical quality, with overbearing beats competing for attention. I was left scrambling to figure out who to pay attention to and when but that is all part of the high-wire stress that the Safdies have tried to create here, verbalizing the constantly spinning inner wheels of Howard’s relentless plots.

Sandler is perfectly cast as Howard, capturing the character’s glazed-over, thousand-yard-stare highs and the motormouthed bullshit artist con game that Howie is nearly always spitting. The performance borders on annoying, like a persistent mosquito that you just can’t seem to swat away, but that’s the lifeblood of this character. He’s quite awful. In a knowing reversal of the film’s title, Howard is the opposite of a diamond in the rough. He’s no uncut gem. He’s a dirtbag with few redeeming qualities. His wife despises him. His girlfriend, he treats like garbage. His kids endure him at best. He might be unpolished but no matter how many times you shine him up and give him another chance, Howard will still be an obnoxious piece of trash doomed to make the wrong decision over and over again until it ruins the lives of all those around him.

This sense of human poisonousness seems to fascinate the Safdies, who just recently drew up Robert Pattinson’s Connie Nikas, a typhoon of a character who ruined just about everything he touched. While he’s no bank robber, Howard’s incessant chasing of gambling highs makes him equally a destructive force, both to himself and those closest to him. As the movie speeds to an inevitable conclusion, viewers watch a painstaking portrait of a man helpless to his worst instincts. I cannot speak to their utter fascination with self-destruction but few filmmakers translate these kinds of characters better than the Safdies.

With a supporting cast that includes Idina Menzel in one of her few live-action movie roles, b-ball boy Garnett, former-Playboy model and breakout Julia Fox, and pop-singer The Weeknd, one has to admire the many seemingly bizarre casting decisions of Uncut Gems. From casting Sandler as the film’s hard-to-like protagonist to throwing a bunch of otherwise famous people to support him, the Safdies are comfortable taking risks and it really works out here, giving the film a kind of sadistic realism that informs the sense of danger and despair. That danger and despair casts a long shadow over Uncut Gems and its sad stable of characters, contributing to a difficult feature that only A24 could (and would) deliver. Destined not to be everyone’s cup of tea, those wanting to induce an in-theater panic attack need look no further than the Safdies’ latest creation.

CONCLUSION: Adam Sandler puts on his serious shoes as a neurotic compulsive gambler in the Safdie Brother’s high-stress drama ‘Uncut Gems’. A challenging picture sure to leave you scrambled, the film is another off-the-beaten-path venture for the Safdies who continue their streak of nerving-wracking and esoteric adult cinema.