I think part of the reason some people aren't liking this movie is because the advertising makes people expect to see a tightly-paced thriller, as opposed to a more contemplative character study (more of A24's deceptive bullshyt. They never learn).
The movie's very good on the whole. I thought Sandler, Garnett, and Menzel were all great, and the film did a fantastic job of translating the feel of being in a hectic New York business district onto the screen. Special shout out to Garnett, who showed enough despite basically playing himself to make me want to see him do more films (Julia Fox was doing the same thing, but with none of the subtlety Garnett brought to the role. Garnett was a specific version of himself, Fox just literally played herself. I kind of don't understand why everyone wants to make her the next big actress find off of this performance). And I'll say that, despite some contrivances, the final act of the movie was great and plenty tense.
The problem, however, is that the Safdie Brothers took what should have been a 105 minute movie at the most, stretched it to 135 minutes, and crammed a bunch of unnecessary subplot into it. If you break everything down to base components, then what you get out of the film is that it's largely a remake of Bad Lieutenant that combines the religious and gambling themes into one overriding compulsion for Howard. That's actually a really interesting movie by itself, but the message gets crowded by the family and mistress subplot, which aren't really consequential plotlines at all. You could cut 90-95% of Fox and Menzel's scenes and lose none of what makes this movie good. We don't NEED to know anything about Howard's family life, and Julia really only needs to be there to get Garnett's money to the Mohegan Sun in the final act (the Mohegan Sun doesn't do sports betting, but that's another, much less important issue).
But even when you focus on the central conflict (Howard/Arno and co./Garnett and everyone else in the primary orbit of the opal), there are some thematic issues that the Safdie Brothers really don't work out to their full potential, the biggest one being the relationship between Howard's Judaism and his avarice. The movie begins with a grievously injured Ethiopian mine worker being taken to his bosses, while other miners find the opal, then fast forwards to Howard receiving said opal (bought for $100,000) and trying to screw everyone into giving him $500,000-$1,000,000 for it. There's racial, religious, economic, AND political charge to this: the white Jew is profiting off of the suffering of Black Jews, in a more prosperous nation while the latter receive nothing for their labor and pain. What this means is that Garnett asking Howard how much he paid for the opal after their transaction, and later asking Howard how right it is that he profits while the workers get nothing should be an incredibly charged moment in the film, the point where many of its themes come to a head and propels us into the final act. And it's probably the best scene in the film because of Sandler and Daniel Lopatin's score, but it's still lacking because the Safdies basically buried those themes under the weight of Howard's love life for 70% of the film (also, it was the one moment where you could say that casting Garnett was a bad decision. The original player they had in mind for the film, Amar'e Stoudemire, would have made those themes come together so much more strongly, as it becomes an issue of not just race and wealth, but also shared Jewish identity. It's no longer a question of "how could Howard do this to them?," but "how could Howard do this to OUR people, his own people?" Even Joel Embiid would have been better thematically, being Cameroonian and having more of a connection to African wealth than Garnett).
None of those critiques are meant to imply that I didn't like the film: it's very, very good. But it's also a good candidate for worst Safdie Brothers film (the only other candidate probably being The Importance of Being Robbed, their very first film) and I just can't understand why certain critics are acting as if this is some amazing masterpiece. Good Time was better than this.
