Josh Safdie
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Ratner is every bit as secular as the gambling duo Elliott Gould and George Segal in Robert Altman’s California Split (1974)—a movie to which Uncut Gems seems somewhat indebted, not least in the Safdies’ Altman-esque love for the sound of all-American clatter and chatter.
Two 1974 classics: “California Split” and “The Gambler.”
Y en Diamantes en bruto , de nuevo con Martin Scorsese, esta vez con el de Malas calles y su cine de rabia desbocada, a borbotones, con desequilibrios de guion pero con inusitada fuerza visual y sonora; y también con el Robert Altman de la insólita y ludópata California Split, y esas secuencias con cuatro o cinco personajes hablando a la vez, sin apenas profundidad de campo, turbadoras y conmovedoras.
The Safdies clearly idolize Robert Altman (and have openly cited his gambling romp “California Split” as inspiration here), but they’re more precisely operating within the grimy New York milieu that Martin Scorsese made famous in the ‘70s (Scorsese serves as an executive producer).
Like the late director Robert Altman’s movies (see 1974’s “California Split”), the audio track contains an earthy mix of constant background noise and chatter.
After Hours (1985)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
influenced Uncut Gems (2019), Marty Supreme (2025)
Visuals Plot Themes
Stylistically, it recalls the coked-out energy of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours…
But above all, it feels like After Hours for the way things go wrong for our protagonist in the most outrageously hilarious and unexpected ways.
“Uncut Gems” plays like Scorsese’s “After Hours” on acid, with Howard getting sucked into a spiralling vortex of his own impulsive making.
Uncut Gems follows a similar formula, but it’s even slicker and more propulsive, evoking such classics as Dog Day Afternoon and After Hours in its ability to wring maximum ‘what now?’ tension from its milieu.
Howard lets him borrow it, and then everything turns all After Hours on him when he can't quite ever seem to get the opal back again.
Based on their father’s experiences in Manhattan’s Diamond District years earlier, Uncut Gems lacks the deliberate focus of something like Good Time , which spun out of a wild single night in the life of New York’s most self-assured con-man, but it’s more Casino than After Hours (the Scorsese comparison being more apt given that ol’ Marty is a producer on this one).
Mean Streets (1973)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
influenced Uncut Gems (2019)
Characters Visuals Themes
To wit, the smarmily charming, chronically self-sabotaging Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) in Uncut Gems is an updated, older and paunchier version of Robert De Niro’s Johnny Boy in Scorsese’s Mean Streets, and if you know that 1973 film, you know to a large extent where Uncut Gems is going, and how it feels to get there.
It has the urgent look and jagged style of early Martin Scorsese films such as “Mean Streets.”
And as was the case with “Good Time,” there are traces of noir classics and New York thrillers, too, with “ Mean Streets ” being among the most fitting comparison points.
The film is also more of a deft, passionately dynamic homage to the 1970s, early ‘80s works of Martin Scorsese than Todd Phillips Joker even slightly was, Uncut Gems capturing the same urgent agency of films like Mean Streets , Taxi Driver and After Hours with viscerally audacious ease.
Held together by a hilarious, manic, tour-de-force performance by Adam Sandler—one of his very best which now ranks among “Punch Drunk Love” and those all-time touchstones (update your rankings asap)—the Safdies somehow outdo their last, similarly chaotic picture “Good Time,” and create a new “Mean Streets” for their own generation.
That quest suggests “Mean Streets” by way of Preston Sturges, with a touch of “Death of a Salesman” to boot — a mesmerizing chronicle of desperate schemes, and it’s hard to imagine anyone but Sandler at the center of it.
Unlike films like “Rocky” and “Invincible,” Marty’s passion doesn’t lift others up but often brings them down.
…people will watch a Rocky-esque movie like theirs…
This is ultimately satisfying like how The Karate Kid or Rocky is satisfying, just in a deeper way.
Like the original Rocky, Mauser doesn’t quite get what he hopes for, but gets to go out in a blaze of glory…
…he's crafted a grand, upturned fairy tale that feels like funhouse reflection inverse of Rocky. Where Rocky's defeat was a spiritual victory, Marty's victory feels like a spiritual defeat…
Safdie has basically taken the broader Rocky/Karate Kid formula of “someone fighting against the odds and their own personal demons to give their best, scrappy shot at their given sport”…
The prologue recalls William Friedkin’s The Exorcist , a movie that similarly (and ominously) opens in a foreign land before transporting the viewer to America.
The siblings, who have experience turning mainstream icons into earring-clad scumbags thanks to 2017′s Robert Pattinson-starring Good Time, start big and fast and grimy – after an opening that pays homage to the underground horrors of The Exorcist, the directors dive deep into the under-the-skin horrors of the human body, tracing the inside of Howard’s colon – and do not stop to take a breath for one single vulgar moment.
More specifically, the dusty, enigmatic opener in “Uncut Gems” drolly echoes the start of “The Exorcist” (1973), where a priest at an archaeological dig in Iraq unearths the demonic relic that sets off the ensuing horror, the possession and spewing vomit.
The ancient power awakens in the film’s opening moments, the camera swooping like a locust across an Ethiopian mine to find a bunch of workers, overseen by their multinational bosses, in an opal-struck frenzy that recalls nothing so much as the discovery of the demon idol in The Exorcist .
Two 1974 classics: “California Split” and “The Gambler.”
It's essentially a twisted, over/under gambling story, not unlike Karel Reisz's The Gambler (1974), wherein our protagonist rushes around borrowing things, hocking things, betting on things, and hoping everything evens out, or else he's going to meet an unpleasant fate.
In making the results of a playoff series a life-and-death matter for an in-too-deep gambler, Uncut Gems owes not a little to 1992’s Bad Lieutenant, a film by another New York moviemaker distinguished by his commitment to capturing the tonality of the city—Abel Ferrara, who turned in a cameo in the Safdies’ 2009 Daddy Longlegs.
So, with a mix of guts and resourcefulness, the film rips a page out of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love playbook and leans into certain Sandlerisms—primarily the idea of a loud, abrasive man-child without a behavioral filter—while placing them in a discombobulating new dramatic and artistic context, like Billy Madison remade as Abel Ferrara’s neo-exploitation classic Bad Lieutenant.
If Good Time , which you can view on Amazon Prime, had something of the feel of Dog Day Afternoon , Uncut Gems made me think of Bad Lieutenant, the pugnacious 1992 Abel Ferrara film about a not-nice police officer, memorably played by Harvey Keitel, and his attempts to survive his gambling addiction during a New York Mets playoff run.
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
influenced Uncut Gems (2019), Marty Supreme (2025)
Characters Themes
Marty’s haughtiness and drive for success evoke The Wolf of Wall Street, as our protagonist is charming yet detestable.
…the 29-year-old performer exudes a charismatic presence reminiscent of his mentor’s (DiCaprio’s) style in The Wolf of Wall Street.
If you like your movies over-the-top like “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Inglorious Basterds,” then has A24 a movie for you!
Uncut Gems had echoes of other stressful movies like A Serious Man and The Wolf of Wall Street , though neither film achieves the same level of adrenaline.
There are echoes of The Wolf of Wall Street ‘s Jordan Belfort here, minus the endlessly luxurious lifestyle.
Of course, I had to sit through the entire film as that's my job, and I have to say it was an arduous watch, not just due to its aggressive and sensory assaultive nature, but also because it nearly made it to "The Wolf of Wall Street" numbers in terms of F-bombs dropped.
The Smashing Machine (2025)
Directed by Benny Safdie
influenced Uncut Gems (2019), Marty Supreme (2025), Lenny Cooke (2013)
Themes Visuals
Even after splitting up to direct their own films, the duo is still detailing the anxiogenic stories of dreamers, with Benny Safdie making “The Smashing Machine” and Josh Safdie making “Marty Supreme.”
…sticking with the sporting world of Lenny Cooke and Uncut Gems…
Safdie directs with the same nervy intensity that defined Uncut Gems, but here that energy is turned inward…
Safdie’s direction is very intimate and tight, almost paying homage to the chaotic handheld movements of Uncut Gems…
Like the Safdie’s classic “feel so bad it’s good” projects Good Time and Uncut Gems, the film looks incredible.
Safdie employs a fly-on-the-wall approach that echoes Uncut Gems…
Uncut Gems follows a similar formula, but it’s even slicker and more propulsive, evoking such classics as Dog Day Afternoon and After Hours in its ability to wring maximum ‘what now?’ tension from its milieu.
But as he gets deeper into trouble with an ever-widening group of enemies, the movie’s tone darkens, ending in a hostage situation at the jewelry store that recalls the gang-who-couldn’t-shoot-straight standoff of Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon .
If Good Time , which you can view on Amazon Prime, had something of the feel of Dog Day Afternoon , Uncut Gems made me think of Bad Lieutenant, the pugnacious 1992 Abel Ferrara film about a not-nice police officer, memorably played by Harvey Keitel, and his attempts to survive his gambling addiction during a New York Mets playoff run.
The film is also more of a deft, passionately dynamic homage to the 1970s, early ‘80s works of Martin Scorsese than Todd Phillips Joker even slightly was, Uncut Gems capturing the same urgent agency of films like Mean Streets , Taxi Driver and After Hours with viscerally audacious ease.
If Jerry Lewis had played Taxi Driver ’s Travis Bickle, he might have gotten the same misguided praise that Sandler has for going against his strengths and misrepresenting his anxieties.
With “Uncut Gems,” the directors have definitely hit the big time, making a divisive but undeniably rowdy character study that rivals such heavyweights as “Taxi Driver” and “Pi” in its single-minded commitment to a certifiable head case.
Like Robert Bresson’s similarly themed L’Argent, the endless cycle of greed can be traced back to a single piece of currency.
Good Time (2017)
Directed by Benny Safdie
influenced by Marty Supreme (2025), The Pleasure of Being Robbed (2008)
Themes Visuals
…their particular type of dreamers are also con-men, liars, and schemers…but ultimately “Heaven Knows What,” “Good Time,” and “Uncut Gems” all revolve around people who dream of a bigger and better life for themselves.
Marty Supreme is the third film in an unofficial Safdie trilogy of thrilling, propulsive character studies of grubby, egotistical, narcissistic New Yorkers, along with Good Time and Uncut Gems…
Josh seems to have retained a bit more of the Uncut Gems/Good Time feel with his latest, Marty Supreme.
If you took any enjoyment from the layers of Good Time and Uncut Gems…
It’s not exactly the neon-lit splendour of Good Time…
It also lacks the subversive fun of the Safdie brothers’ two greatest triumphs, “Good Time” and “Uncut Gems.”
Emily the Criminal (2022)
Directed by John Patton Ford
influenced by Uncut Gems (2019)
Visuals Characters
Clearly nodding to the suffocating energy in the Safdies’ Uncut Gems—itself inspired by the seedy, grounded Dustin Hoffman ‘70s crime classic Straight Time—Emily the Criminal abundantly draws from both without ever finding a distinctive voice of its own.
It’s a feat the Safdie brothers accomplished with Uncut Gems. And Plaza is as convincing here as Adam Sandler was there.
A grand tale of aspiration and consequences, à la “Boogie Nights” and “Goodfellas,” it’s one of the year’s best films.
…or Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights…
In this case, he adds a wistful, flute-infused motif that alternates with a gentle, whistled reverie, recalling the smeary character pieces of the 1970s--The Panic in Needle Park, Scarecrow--that clearly served as an influence.
Taking a page from last year’s Best Picture winner, Anora, which stopped its steady passage of time for a combative “one wild night” escapade…
The film taps into a style reminiscent of the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems (2019), in which relatively unknown actors and average Joes take on comedic bit parts. Anora’s gangster trio have considerably more acting experience than Wayne Diamond or the real-life jewelers in Gems. But they still excel in lapping up laugh after laugh because they feel like real guys.
Anora, Sean Baker’s latest film following 2021's Cannes-premiering Red Rocket, is a raucous blast - a kinetic New York City screwball comedy that shares the chaotic energy of the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems and disguises a darker heart.
It is here, when it becomes a stressful but humorous farce by way of Uncut Gems crossed with Martin Scorsese's After Hours, that Madison takes her established charisma and fiery delivery to extreme new heights, forming unexpected new bonds and encountering more than a few obstacles with unfiltered ferocity which she never sacrifices, even at her lowest moments.
The jettisoning between the highest of highs and lowest of lows is familiar if you’ve seen any addiction movie, like Mississippi Grind or Requiem for a Dream, but it’s surprising how well Sandler pulls this off, how much hope and desperation he imbues into a character who could have easily been a caricature.
Instead, the Safdies’ faux realism and boastful trashiness recall Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream , an approach that trivializes the Jewish Prince predicament rather than tacke it — as in the buoyant yet weighty Vampire Weekend song “Harmony Hall,” in which Ezra Koenig confesses, “A nervous heart that beats like a young pretender’s / beneath these velvet gloves I hide the shameful crooked hands of the moneylender / cuz I still remember.”
Safdie takes a page from Raging Bull and is more intimately focused on making this a layered, scrutinising character study.
Sure, but only in the way that Scorsese’s Raging Bull or The Color Of Money are sports movies.
…complete with a Look Who’s Talking!-style opening credits sequence—impregnating his married paramour…
…sequence lifted from Look Who’s Talking, of all places…