'Uncut Gems' truly is a tour de force for Adam Sandler

There's been a lot of fuss made about how abrasive and well, 'stressful' the new Safdie brothers movie Uncut Gems is and it's true -- they amp up the pressure cooker atmosphere they so effectively created in Good Time and they have a truly tour de force performance from the mercurial Mr. Adam Sandler at its center.

Yet despite its propulsive soundtrack and expletive laden script -- it's a compelling character study at its core and impeccably well-crafted even if it seems like pure mayhem is breaking out on screen.

This is a frequently shocking and unpredictable movie -- one that might try some audiences' patience (it's less tightly plotted than Good Time was), but if you surrender to its wild wavelength you'll be endlessly entertained.

First off, this is a deeply funny movie. Sandler can be hilarious and maddeningly lazy depending on how engaged he is in a film. Punch-Drunk Love had been the high water mark of his career as an actor but his performance here is even richer and more layered. He's more than just a gambling addict -- he's a real jerk, too -- arguably an irredeemable one, and yet strangely likable in his own unconventional way.

I kept thinking of Jack Lemmon's classic nervous loser characters -- always trying to talk their way out of desperate, doomed circumstances -- they were like a human car wreck, you wanted to look away but you can't. The same goes for Sandler's perfectly named Howard Ratner.

He does nothing but make bad, reckless decisions and somehow, like his mistress (the lovely Julia Fox, who ought to become a star off this movie) you somehow kind of love him for it.

The Safdies, who I'm told drew upon the life of their father in real life, have such a feel for a certain kind of underbelly of New York City. It's not specifically cultural in the way Scorsese's work usually is, even if this film puts Ratner's identity as a Jew front and center. The movie is teeming with all sorts of colorful characters -- from Lakeith Stanfield as a uneasy partner of Howard's to a surprisingly terrific Kevin Garnett as himself and NY sports broadcasting staple Mike Francesca, who's a lot of fun as an exasperated bookie.

As Howard's schemes -- he starts out the movie already in debt and seems content to keep digging himself a bigger hole -- get more an more perilous you too feel like you're plunging into an abyss and when the film reaches its genuinely shocking conclusion you may have to catch your breath. It's that riveting.

Not only have the Safdies made a really original, curious work -- they've laid claim to an auteur mantle that proves their previous success is no fluke. Every needle drop and performance in this chaotic movie feels on point and even if its very rough around the edges, its also irresistibly funny when it wants to be.

Sandler plays to all his strengths here as a performer -- the pathetic vulnerability, the volcanic rage the nervous energy. He could be and should be a major actor, if he just abandoned the lazy high concept comedies that have come to define his career.

In this year's extremely competitive Best Actor race, Sandler should be a shoo in but I worry that his past will cause snobby voters to shy away from allowing the phrase Academy Award nominee Adam Sandler to ever be uttered. But, awards or not, this is a major breakthrough for him and an ambitious firecracker of a film for the Safdies.