For the last several years, Adam Sandler has been making a living on Netflix making largely uneventful comedies. However,while those movies haven't required Sandler to flex his acting muscles all that much, we know the man is capable of doing some really unique work in front of the camera, and his newest film, Uncut Gems, is set to show just what the actor is capable of. Possibly enough to win an Oscar?
It seems almost insane to say that Oscar buzz is surrounding an Adam Sandler movie, but that's just the situation after Uncut Gems debuted at the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals. The first trailer for the film has dropped and now the rest of us can see what all the fuss is about. Check it out below.
Uncut Gems follows Adam Sandler in the role of Howard Ratner, a dealer in New York City's diamond district. Howard is used to having money, and he's used to enjoying money. However, things go sideways for Howard and he ends up in debt to some pretty serious people. His life begins to unravel, and we will be able to witness every minute.
If the trailer is any indication, it will be a free fall sort of decline for Howard. Even the trailer hits us with an incredibly fast pace from one moment to the next and there's every reason to believe the movie will follow suit. It's the sort of story that won't let you catch your breath.
It also looks to be a movie about pretty terrible people living pretty terrible lives. How much we'll sympathize with Howard's plight, or how much we're even supposed to, remains to be seen. He's certainly not presented as the sort of person we're supposed to like, but that just makes the entire movie that much more intriguing.
While it's certainly impossible to tell from a trailer just how good Adam Sandler will actually be in Uncut Gems, there's certainly no argument that this performance is about as far as possible from what we think of as an "Adam Sandler movie." Sandler has stepped out of that zone before, to be sure, but it's a somewhat rare occurrence.
It's also just the sort of move that the folks that give out awards, like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, absolutely love to see.
Uncut Gems is directed by the Safdie Brothers, whose last project, Good Time took another actor better known for one type of film, and put him in something quite different. In that case it was Robert Pattinson.
In addition to the trailer, Uncut Gems also released a brand new poster, which shows us just how bad a day Howard is about to have.
Uncut Gems hits theaters in December.
