Marty Supreme
- Directed by: Josh Safdie
- Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion
- Sport/Drama | R | 2 hr 29 min
3.5 stars
Reviewed by Reed Ripley
Marty Supreme’s ping pong is too good.
That’s a funny thing to say about something at least partially marketed as a “sports biopic,” but it’s true. The film is bookended by brilliantly executed, thrilling table tennis scenes—a laughable concept on paper, but undeniable on screen—yet the intervening two hours focus on the titular Marty Mauser’s (Timothée Chalamet) increasingly desperate attempts to finance a dream that virtually everyone else sees as delusionary. While those two hours continue the ping pong scenes’ technical execution, they’re unrelentingly abrasive.
Undoubtedly, that’s exactly what director Josh Safdie was going for, but it’s an acquired taste that no level of filmmaking execution can overcome for those that are turned off. The broad strokes of Marty Supreme are like any other sports movie—cocky athlete experiences failure and works his way back to the top—but instead of training montages and motivational speeches, there is simply Marty’s non-stop hustling to scrap together enough funds for another shot. Marty views his defeat as a fluke, not necessarily something to learn from, and that outlook never really changes.
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It’s an interesting subversion of the genre, but that subversion extends not only to the path Marty takes to “achieve” his dreams, but also to the feeling the film evokes. This isn’t a feel-good story for anyone other than perhaps Marty himself, and Marty leaves everyone he encounters worse than he found them. While never boring, watching Marty casually use up his friends and family, usually with disastrous results, is an incredibly stressful experience.
But again, that’s clearly the point. Marty Supreme is very much interested in the same things as 2019’s Uncut Gems (Josh Safdie’s most recent film that he made with his brother, Benny Safdie, who also launched his solo directorial career with this year’s The Smashing Machine), a film starring Adam Sandler as Howard Ratner, a debt-ridden Diamond District jeweler looking for that elusive last big hit. Both explore the cost, both literal and personal, of unwavering self-belief, and what kind of person can even sustain that kind of mindset. Marty Supreme succeeds just as Uncut Gems did, but that’s a tough thing to sit with for a couple hours—but hey, at least there’s some great ping pong.