Marty Supreme
by George Wolf
It’s been six years now, have we recovered from the panic and palpitations brought on by Josh Safdie’s Uncut Gems?
Better towel off and grab hold of something, because Marty Supreme serves up another harried drama set at a breakneck pace.
Served up, see what I did there? Marty “The Mouse” Mauser is a table tennis phenom looking to cement his name as the best in the world.
But when we first meet him, Marty (an absolutely electric Timothée Chalamet) is working in a shoe store in 1950s New York. He’s a born salesman, but makes it clear he’s only there to make enough money to finance his next trip to a big tournament. And in that opening few minutes, Safdie and Chalamet gives us a clear glimpse into the Marty Mauser worldview that will grab us by the throat for the next two and a half hours.
Everyone and everything is a means to an end. And Marty is relentless.
It could be an adoring young woman who’s already married (Odessa A’zion), a rich ink pen tycoon (Shark Tank‘s Kevin O’Leary in another bit of Safdie stunt casting) or his bored actress wife (a terrific Gwyneth Paltrow), or even a man out to find his lost dog. It doesn’t matter, Marty will size you up and instantly start working the angle he thinks is most likely to make you an asset.
The entire film, loosely based on Jewish-American table tennis champ Marty Reisman, is a fascinating character study and Chalamet is in mesmerizing, career-best form. Safdie (co-writing again with Ronald Bronstein) might as well just shoot Marty out of a cannon when he leaves that shoe store, and Chalamet makes you afraid to miss anything by looking away.
Like everything else here, the table tennis action is fast, furious and intense, and after an early loss to an unknown, Marty’s singular mission becomes avenging that upset and proving his greatness. But Marty Supreme could be about any type of American unafraid to dream big. It’s another intoxicating ride from Josh Safdie, with an award-worthy Chalamet digging soul deep into a man’s journey toward finding something he values more than himself.
