STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) is a small time New York hustler, caught up in a whirlwind of small time hoodlums, wannabe gangstas and a mountain of debt. Some glimmer of hope appears to surface in the shape of some diamonds from Ethiopia he has got his hands on, which he appears to have a buyer for. While he navigates his personal life, including his volatile wife, slightly more understanding mistress, and his teenage son, when his deal with the diamonds appears to go sideways, he finds himself plunged headlong into an escalating crisis that won't end well.

Adam Sandler is something of a Marmite comedic actor, who has a pretty love or hate effect with audiences. Personally, he's always gone over my head, and I can't even recall seeing one of his films (even arguably his most popular and well known, The Wedding Singer) with him in the lead. Indeed, the only one that springs to mind is Anger Management, where he co starred opposite the legendary Jack Nicholson (on whose part much more of the laughs were generated than Sandler!) But here he is, cast against type and reinvented, in this unconventional crime drama from the Safdie Brothers.

In one long, continuous take, we are thrust into the world of Howard Ratner, with the Safdies aiming to create the impression of being in his skin as he navigates this world of outwardly friendly people, who constantly turn hostile at the merest perceived provocation, trapping us in a vortex of relentless aggressiveness and excessive bad language, that becomes a bit overwhelming. Sandler has to convey this persona, because his character either himself naturally has this temperament or has to adopt it to survive, but there's a goofiness about him that really makes it hard to take him seriously, however hard he tries. Add to this a thin, sketchy plot that doesn't have enough about it to sustain a two hour fifteen minute running time, and the result is quite a heavy misfire.

The Safdie Brothers have attempted an early Tarantino style unique approach to the crime genre, albeit with a much bigger budget and a bigger name star. Maybe it went over my head, maybe I need to see it again, but for me, it just didn't really work. Although, unlike with other mediocre efforts, I can see why others might disagree with me. **