Movie Review: 'Marty Supreme' is a Cinematic Champ

This Timothée Chalamet and Josh Safdie collab will leave you tingling and itchy

Look for Timothée Chalamet to bask in some serious awards buzz for his starring role in Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, a nervy, screwball-ish paean to the American conviction that talent, drive, and a soupçon or two of pure brashness must, absolutely must, comprise a recipe for success.

(Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme. A24)

Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, a 1950s table tennis pro who is poised to take the world championship. (He’s reportedly loosely based on the real American table tennis player Marty Reisman.) Unfortunately, two things stand in his way: A Chinese wunderkind with a new kind of paddle, and his own ego, which is so outsized that it just about eclipses his talent. Besieged by a needy mother and a well-meaning but uncomprehending uncle who tries to roadblock Marty’s ambitions and get him to settle down into a job as a shoe salesman, Marty resorts to hustles, con jobs, armed robbery, and, at one point, a wild conflagration to escape the pitfalls he encounters (not a few of which are self-engineered). To be big, he has to act big… or so his reasoning seems to go. The problem is, while he might possess considerable athletic gifts the rest of his toolbox is stuffed with sharp-edged implements he’s not entirely well-equipped to handle — including his skill as a womanizer, a penchant that opens windows even as it slams doors shut. Among Marty’s conquests are his neighbor Rachel (Adessa A’zion), who makes a decent shop keeper and a somewhat less satisfactory partner in crime, and the upscale Kay (Gwyneth Paltrow), an acclaimed actress on the verge of a comeback. Both are married to other men, but that’s barely even a consideration for Marty except, perhaps, for the happenstance that Kay’s husband, Milton (Kevin O’Leary), is an influential businessman sponsoring a major table tennis tournament. In a masterclass in how not to play both sides, Marty seeks to make allies of both Kay and Milton in his quest to escape his grasping family and make his way to the championships. He succeeds as brilliantly as he fails, which is part and parcel of a movie made by one of the Safdie brothers.

(Gwyneth Paltrow in Marty Supreme. A24)

Marty’s misadventures include run-ins with corrupt cops, shotgun-wielding farmers, naive financial backers, dog-loving mobsters, a crate full of specially emblazoned orange table tennis balls that give the film its name, and the prospect of fatherhood. It’s a terrifying mix, and Safdie, working with screenwriter Ronald Bronstein, punches up the suspense and absurdity until you’re no longer sure which is which. For his part, Chalamet brings the character to such dimensional life you’re not sure he won’t jump right out of the screen.

“Marty Supreme” premieres in theaters on Christmas Day.