Marty Supreme review (2025)

Marty Supreme finds Timothée Chalamet delivering yet another “go ahead and pencil him in for Best Actor nominee” performance as one of the most unlikable characters in a film this year.

Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) tries his hand at a sports drama of a sort as would be table tennis legend Marty Mauser. New York in 1952 toiling at his uncle’s shoe shop is not the lofty aspirations Marty has for his life. He wants to be a table tennis star renowned across the world.

Fully committing to the role in a way to provide the most authentic manner possible, Chalamet trained for years to gain a credible mastery of ping pong. That’s the kind of actor’s homework nomination guilds love and makes the Marty Supreme matches more engaging since there’s no need for camera trickery to account for stand-ins doing the heavy lifting of volleys and serves.

Marty Supreme is loosely based on real table tennis legend Marty Reisman, who like Chalamet’s character, was a reportedly a confident hustler with a showman personality who dabbled as a warm-up act on tour with the Harlem Globetrotters.

Director/co-screenwriter Josh Sofdie and co-screenwriter Ronald Bronstein don’t paint Marty as the usual underdog hero. Marty is arrogant and boastful to the point it’s unclear if he’s trying to convince anyone who will listen to him or merely faking it until he believes it himself. Marty Supreme has echoes of an inspirational story, but Marty is too flawed a character to have much redeeming value.

Table tennis might be his skill, but Marty’s true talent is selling others on the idea that he’s about to make it big — and if they stick with him long enough and possibly front some cash, he’ll bring them along for the ride. One of the more challenging aspects of Marty Supreme is how Marty continually burns his friends, business partners and lovers with yet another flimflam story and they keep trusting him not to do the same again and again.

Among those “burn victims” is his best friend, Wally (rapper Tyler, The Creator) and old childhood girlfriend, Rachel (Odessa A’zion, Until Dawn), who’s since gotten married. They’re carrying on an affair behind her smart enough to be suspicious, but too dumb to figure it out husband’s back.

Marty Supreme rolls out as if Safdie and Bronstein want viewers to absolve Marty for being an insufferable louse as it’s all in the name of his pursuit of greatness. That’s a tough sell considering the abundance of tech bros and influencers who don’t care about their followers provided they can keep making a buck and come out ahead unscathed in the event of any scandal. Most audiences don’t appreciate that in the real world and asking them to root for Marty is similar.

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Credit some of that to Chalamet’s rapid-fire delivery and the smooth charm he imbues Marty with as he’s manipulating everyone around him with fake sincerity. Marty isn’t so much a hustler as he is a con artist that few can see through.

One character who maintains some level of guard around Marty is Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow). Kay is an actress on the downward spiral of her career, now starring in lousy plays. She’s married to the wealthy tycoon husband Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary), who views her more of a possession now making it easier for Marty to sink his opportunistic claws into her.

Paltrow, who delivers one of her best performances, has to cover for some script deficiencies specifically what makes her intrigued with this braggart considering she’s used to that type from her Hollywood heyday. If any character should be immune to Marty’s charm, it should be Kay. Paltrow does solid work conveying Kay’s realization of the state her life is in where she’s being used on multiple fronts by two men and neither love her.

A’zion provides a fiery supporting turn as Rachel seeks to be a constant presence in Marty’s life even if he is single-mindedly focused on regaining his “stolen” glory.

Marty’s big dreams of table tennis dominance are thwarted when he loses in the finals of a prestigious tournament. Normally, this would make a character refocus and figure out what went wrong, but Marty is largely nonplussed and itching for a rematch to properly assert his dominance. It’s not a defeat in his eyes if he never acknowledges it.

The path to a rematch sends Marty through some wild scenarios from hustling with shacking up at a hotel with weak ceilings, dealing with a pregnancy scare at the worst possible moment and watching a gangster’s dog while fending off an angry group of guys who got hustled. This leads to a brilliant sequence from director of photography Darius Khondji in one of the film’s best shot moments.

Marty Supreme is long at two and a half hours due largely to the repetition of Marty using those close to him, but the unpredictable scenarios keep the film from ever getting too stale or boring.

Safdie thrives in the chaos that is Marty’s lifestyle of rash decisions and callous actions. While it makes for a mostly engaging film, the final act speeds through a woefully unwarranted and unearned redemption that invites far too many questions than Marty Supreme is positioned to answer.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Photo Credit: A24

After watching Marty Supreme, check out Chalamet as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown on 4K at Amazon.

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