Timothée Chalamet spent five years in training for Marty Supreme, dragging a table-tennis table from one film to the next, so he could hone his skills by banging out a few games between takes. There’s lots of spare time on film sets, especially on the sort of big productions Chalamet has got used to appearing in – Dune, Wonka, A Complete Unknown.
It has paid off. Whatever else Marty Supreme is, it’s exhibition-class proof that Chalamet put in the hours and became a plausible table tennis dynamo. As for the rest of it, it’s director/co-writer Josh Safdie’s first film made without the support structure of brother Benny. The Safdies did Uncut Gems together, which is pretty much unbeatable, let’s face it. So what to do as a combined debut/follow-up? More of the same, ish ish, kind of.
An edgy, nervy knuckle-whitener about a dweeb being horrifyingly taken to the cleaners? Not quite, though there is quite an element of that in Chalamet’s performance as the 1950s American table-tennis player ploughing his way to the top, and whining ceaselessly as he does so. Though in many respects Marty Mauser is the John McEnroe of table tennis – a talent as big as his self-belief, charming yet irritating, and with a prescient awareness that he is not just a person but a brand.
All his breathtaking chutzpah is summed up in the relationship Mauser pursues with an older actress (Gwyneth Paltrow, excellent), while simultaneously trying to squeeze sponsorship money out of her businessman husband (entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary, remarkably effective), having clearly never heard of the concept of not biting the hand that feeds you.
The film plays several games simultaneously, the most standard one being Mauser’s pursuit of table-tennis glory. His particular nemesis is the Japanese champion Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), who is everything Mauser is not – quiet (Kawaguchi is deaf), playing for his country rather than personal glory, deferential, a believer in sportsmanship not gamemanship.
Standard, yes, but upended. We’re onside with the asshole not the guy struggling against the odds, with Marty Supreme relying on Chalamet’s reserves of charm to bounce us over Mauser’s more questionable moments, of which there are plenty.
Like One Battle After Another, there is a mad-dash aspect to it all. This is also a knickerbocker glory movie with scoops, squirts, sprinkles, and syrups all over the place. Safdie and cowriter Ronald Bronstein give us genre elements mixed in with the deliberately non-generic. Normal relationships – with Rachel (Odessa A’zion), the married woman he shouldn’t be seeing. With his mother (Fran Drescher). With Kletzki (Geza Röhrig), the old friend with whom he stages vastly entertaining exhibition games. And then there are the fizz-bang relationships – like the one with dangerous grizzled New York dude Ezra Mishkin (Abel Ferrara), or with Wally (Tyler Okonma aka Tyler the Creator), as fellow table-tennis player Wally, with whom Marty goes hustling, just for kicks.
Similarly, generic fight-against-adversity (himself in this case) elements are mixed in with events that come out of left field and often have nothing to do with anything else. Every 15 minutes or so Bronstein and Safdie subject Marty to something spectacular. Like the moment when Mauser’s bath drops through the floor into the room of Ezra Mishkin below, trapping both the old dude and his beloved dog.
All this plus an entirely anachronistic soundtrack of the likes of Tears for Fears, New Order and Public Image – just another squirt of something from out of nowhere in case you haven’t got enough yet.
Was someone getting nervous? Maybe. Was there a sneaking suspicion that Marty’s bumptious-asshole character needs more charm than any movie can deliver? Possibly. As Marty Mauser becomes ever more unbearable we start to wonder if there will be salvation for him, of any sort at all. Are we being entertained, or are we being hustled?
Marty Supreme – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
