Director: Josh Safdie
Writer: Josh Safdie, Ronald Bronstein
Stars: Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion
Synopsis: Marty Mauser, a young man with a dream no one respects, goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness.
In a year full of underwhelming disappointments, A24’s Marty Supreme is here to save the day. Josh Safdie’s seventh directorial feature, only his second time helming a film solo, and the first since his debut, The Pleasure of Being Robbed, is a slice of cinema unlike anything you’ve ever seen. An exhilarating sports epic that transports you to another time and place, it strips away the noir-soaked urban sheen of the period. Safdie replaces it with hard-boiled comedy, bustling claustrophobia, and overwhelming anxiety.
This isn’t a New York City where glamour is front and center. Marty Supreme jumps off the screen, big and bold, riveting and exciting, eclectic and alive with an electric charge. That’s because this is a story that puts the downtrodden front and center. The movie is for the dreamers, the workers, the hustlers, the bustlers, and the barstool regulars circling the drain and barely keeping their heads above water. These are the New Yorkers who give the city its color, vibe, and flair.
For those who revel in just as much moral ambiguity in the shadows as those Big Apple corporate fat cats, that’s where Timothée Chalamet comes in. Rumor has it he was furious when he didn’t take home the little gold man known as Oscar last year for playing Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. This isn’t a performance that encompasses America in peacetime or the decade of great conformity. Safdie ignores the humble post-war politics, and America is always portrayed with post-war optimism.
No, Chalamet delivers something different. Simply put, this is the best performance of his career. The actor, previously nominated for Call Me By Your Name and launched into superstardom by the Dune franchise, drops the boyish charm, sex-symbol status, and tortured-soul charisma for a caustic, motor-mouth energy fueled by narcissistic ambition—magnetic, chaotic, and a sight to behold.
Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, the star of, at least according to Marty, the fastest rising sport in the world, ping-pong. He’s a showman: arrogant and fiery, the John McEnroe of table tennis, frequently antagonizing his opponents and violating the boundaries and personal space of referees and corporate officials. Marty doesn’t want to live his life blending into the background. Marty wants to be front and center. He doesn’t want to step into the spotlight. No, he expects the spotlight to follow him.
There isn’t a person Marty won’t use or manipulate to get to the top. For instance, he steals money from his uncle’s safe to finance his trip to Europe for an international table tennis tournament. It doesn’t matter that he got a married pet-store owner, Rachel (She Rides Shotgun’s Odessa A’zion), pregnant; took advantage of his best friend Wally (Tyler, The Creator), mooching off his mother (Fran Drescher), or trying to con a past-her-prime actress (Gwyneth Paltrow) and her wealthy magnate husband (Kevin O’Leary, no, that isn’t a typo).
That’s the bushel of carrots when it comes to Marty Supreme, written by Josh Safdie, who co-wrote the script with longtime Safdie brother editor and producer Ronald Bronstein (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You), and he swings an awfully ambitious stick here. Marty Supreme works on many levels, being part sports film, crime thriller, and dark social chaos comedy. The movie is also heavily influenced by the subtext and themes that begin to bubble to the surface.
There is a fascinating scene of postwar surrealism, what I’ll call “the honey scene,” that is bound to divide audiences. Many will question why it’s even in the film, but it’s a moment unlike anything that has been done before. Featuring the great Géza Röhrig (To Dust, Son of Saul), it’s a sequence that would make Tadeusz Borowski proud. The imagery blends dissociation, survival, shared communal sustenance, and humiliation. This is paired with O’Leary’s “Vampire” fat cat, a character offering a subtle nod to our own era, with capitalist kings running the country.
Of course, this being a solo Josh Safdie film, it feels like he’s the brother who loves to rev up the action with his signature urban-pressure-cooker comedy. The pacing is fervent, and Chalamet delivers a performance and plays a character you somehow can’t stand yet still find yourself rooting for. The comedic chaos of anxiety, ambition, lust, and self-loathing drives him, and Chalamet brings to the surface a deeply seated insecurity caught between ego and shame.
Chalamet’s turn is a tornado of contradictions, masterfully fascinating, as his manic ambition struggles to break free of societal views and labels. The surrounding characters heighten the comedy, with Safdie’s humor emerging through terrible decisions, escalating disasters, and awkward social collisions that make you laugh while covering your eyes. All of this is elevated by Josh Safdie’s signature aesthetic: gritty neorealism, immersive sweat-and-grime atmosphere, and striking street casting that gives the performances a raw, natural feel.
That being said, Marty Supreme is remarkably accessible and a crowd-pleaser for mainstream audiences. The experience is wild, kinetic, and deliriously enjoyable from start to finish. A movie that is destined to become a classic because no one is making movies like this today. Josh Safdie’s third chapter of his Anxiety Cinema trilogy is unmistakably alive and an experience all its own.
Go see this film!
You can watch Marty Supreme only in theaters starting December 16th!
