Love or hate the Safdie brothers, and I definitely lean more towards the former, an interesting thing about them is seeing their natural and unrelenting growth as they have moved from short films to small features, eventually getting themselves to a position where they can work with people such as Robert Pattinson and Adam Sandler. There's a connective tissue running through their filmography, it's there in the types of characters that they are most interested and in the way they can build massive amounts of tension from a chain of bad decisions and misfortune, but each work is a building block to create what has ultimately become a very impressive little filmography. Daddy Long Legs is good. Heaven Knows What is better. Good Time and Uncut Gems are tied as their best yet, although both have elements that lose them a couple of points, in my view.
Connie Nikas (Pattinson) embarks on an ill-advised robbery with his intellectually disabled brother, Nick (played by Benny Safdie). Things inevitably don't go too well, leading to Nick being put in prison, and eventually in hospital. Determined to free his brother, Connie comes up with another poor plan. It goes as well as you'd expect. To turn the situation to his advantage, hopefully, Connie starts working with a man named Ray (Buddy Duress) to retrieve a valuable bottle of liquid acid (as in LSD, not the flesh-burning kind) and some stolen money.
Although he has, much like his female co-star, built up an impressive and diverse selection of performances away from the Twilight series, Pattinson does what I think is his very best work here. He's a dangerously dumb guy, taking any small bit of knowledge and figuring out how he can use it to his advantage. Manipulative, weak-willed, and growing increasingly desperate with every wrong turn, he's an unsavoury character who Pattinson manages to keep you rooting for, mainly thanks to his performance and the fact that a lot of his actions are motivated by the need to save his brother. Safdie is equally excellent in his role, a child in a man's body, dangerously unable to change his behaviour even when a threat starts growing around him. Duress is a different energy level, a crook who hopes to make the most of some unexpected good luck, and he helps the film start to gather momentum towards a riveting finale. Jennifer Jason Leigh is wonderful in her small role, a woman that overlooks the worst in Connie because she believes they're both in love with one another, and Taliah Webster excels in her first feature role, playing a young woman named Crystal who ends up helping Connie and Ray.
As well as the spot-on directorial work, Josh Safdie has once again crafted a cracking little script with regular co-writer Ronald Bronstein, but that structure was put in place to allow the actors to improvise their way through numerous scenes. What the film does best is sketch out a kind of criminal underworld that we don't see too often on film. These main characters aren't smooth gangsters or determined professionals. They are people trying to make the most of small, sometimes out-of-the-blue, opportunities. They know enough people connected to others in positions of power, but they will always be very near the bottom of that particular social strata.
There's also another great score by Daniel Lopatin (credited as Oneohtrix Point Never) and the cinematography from Sean Price Williams gives the Safdie brothers the perfect atmosphere throughout their movie. They seem to inspire everyone to have faith in their vision, and that faith hasn't been misplaced yet. It may have taken me too long to get to this one, although I didn't wait when I had the chance to see, and enjoy Uncut Gems, but I'll be trying to prioritise whatever they give us next.
8/10
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This one, The Rover, and The Lighthouse were the ones that (finally) convinced me that Pattinson was the real deal. He's really great in this, and the Safdies have yet to deliver anything that wasn't fantastic in my opinion. Whatever they are serving up, I'm there with plate ready.
ReplyDeleteEven if they're serving up lobster? Ya liked me lobster? Ah ken ye liked me lobster :-p
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