Uncut Gems

It's loud...it is a bit relentless and it can easily keep the audience on the edge of their seat. It is also a film about quite a few unlikable people and either you turn towards them in the latter part of the film or you don't and the film trudges on without feeling necessarily attached to any of them. The writing is strong, the performances are stronger and the general hecticness is intense and it all comes to a crashing conclusion. The film is very Safdie brothers like...i fyi liked Good Time then you are already half way there.

Uncut Gems (2019) follows Howard Ratner, a gambling scam artist as he makes his way through a messy trail of lies, deceit and consequences and eventually pays the price for his actions. This film is very intense, and it’s very mature, although the film isn’t overtly violent, sexual or filled with drugs, the language is extremely perverse and appears in nearly every line of dialogue. VIOLENCE: MODERATE The violence in this film is tame save for the very end. In the opening scene, a man is dragged out of a mine in Ethiopia with a large, bleeding leg injury. The bone is shown clearly sticking out of his leg as men pour water into it. Shown from a distance, brief and pretty non-graphic. A man is chased down a hallway and grabbed, in response he bites the arm of his attacker. After, he runs further but is clubbed in the back (once, brief) and is grabbed, thrown in the back of a car and stripped of his clothes, he is also punched briefly and thrown in the trunk of a car. A man starts 2 fights in a nightclub, some pushing and shoving, but no real punches are thrown. A man is punched in the throat. He gasps for air and coughs before approaching his attackers, who then punch him in the face and throw him in a fountain. Blood is shown streaming from the top of his head and from his nose, his injuries are shown through the rest of the film, mostly after the attack. A man is suddenly shot in the head, blood sprays out and a bullet hole is visible as we see his body on the floor, blood splattered on the ground behind him. Then, another man is shot in the head, making a bullet hole as he drops to the ground splattering blood nearby. Afterwards, we see a shot zooming into the dead body as blood pools around it and the camera zooms into the bullet hole. This is the most graphic scene in the film, and although it is quite violent, it isn’t very far off from that of a PG-13 movie. LANGUAGE: SEVERE 560 uses of “f*ck”, 6 uses of “c*cksucker”, frequent use of “sh*t”, “b*tch”, “n*gga”, “a**hole”, “ass”, “damn”, “hell” and “d*ck”. The language in this film is incredibly incessant and graphic, it appears constantly in almost every line of dialogue desensitizing the viewer completely by the end of the film. The language is also used to tighten the amount of tension in the film, and the film is very stressful and intense throughout leaving no room for silence, the profanity is constant. SEXUAL CONTENT: MODERATE Some sexual content and images. Some non-graphic content such as a man cuddling with 2 women in a bed, a painting of two nude women (vulva and breasts visible), a man tries to convince a woman to “f*ck” him in a nightclub bathroom, she declines but is implied to give in before they are interrupted, lots of references to “f*cking”, a man says repeatedly throughout the film that he’s “gonna cum”, etc. In one sexual scene (the most graphic in the film) a man hides in a closet as his girlfriend undresses in the apartment without her knowing. She is shown in just a bra and nearly see-thru underwear before he sends her lewd texts like “what are you wearing” and she sends back, “if I tell you you’ll start jacking off in the cab” and it goes back and forth with questions like “are you wet”, “I’m so f*cking wet” and sends the man a picture of her laying in her underwear, we see some pubic hairs in the image but no nudity underneath before the woman reaches into her underwear and starts to masturbate, however the man exits the closet and embraces her before she does anything severe and they fall onto the cough implying they had sex. DRUG CONTENT: MILD A man and a woman are briefly shown snorting coke in a bathroom, some noises are heard and the woman says “there’s some on your face” before it quickly ends. Some casual smoking and drinking. OVERALL MATURITY LEVEL: 7/10