Uncut Gems offers a career-defining performance from Adam Sandler and a uniquely slick crime drama you cannot miss.

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Every once in a blue moon, a familiar star gets a role that changes the way you think of them. They inhabit the part not like a shapeless blanket but as a form fitting suit tailored to their strengths. In the right circumstances, it can reveal striking new dimensions; in rarer instances, it can be weaponized by the canniest of filmmakers. Benny and Josh Safdie, a writing-directing pair of brothers, are two such filmmakers, and the role of Howard Ratner that they gift to Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems is just such a weapon.

As shiny as one of the film’s titular stones, there is a cutting edge to Sandler’s depiction of Howie, a New York jewel dealer, gambler, and family man who lives his life with...