Publication Date: 01-01-2026

Marty Supreme (2025) review

Dir. Josh Safdie

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★½

After my showing of Marty Supreme, Catherine decided to further fry our nerves as soon as we got home and put on Uncut Gems. She hadn’t seen it; I hadn’t seen it since its initial theatrical run. That said, it didn’t take me long before I was leaning forward on my couch, hands “praying” over my mouth, as if I was watching Kevin Garnett and the Boston Celtics try to take down the Philadelphia 76ers in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semis.

I’ve come to the realization that the Safdie brothers, Benny and Josh — full transparency: Benny has no involvement with Marty Supreme; Josh is the director/co-writer/producer — specialize in what I’d call “reaction cinema.” Most of their films, including 2017’s Good Time starring Robert Pattinson, are visceral experiences predicated on wild, scattershot unpredictability. They’re caustically funny, mercilessly violent, liberally vulgar, and revolve around narcissistic antagonists that challenge your perception of how to respond to a primary character. The fun therein is the way in which they gobsmack you with shocking situational happenstance, and the rapidly paced build-up of how causes lead to effects, sometimes two-or-three in any given minute. Seeing Marty Supreme and Uncut Gems in a well-attended auditorium is a treat as well, for once you’re past your initial guffaws, you want to look around and witness the reactions of others.

Based on the life and career of table tennis hustler Marty Reisen, we’re quickly introduced to Marty Mauser (played by Timothée Chalamet in a tour-de-force performance). Josh Safdie and co-writer Ronald Bronstein pluck the famously flamboyant and eccentric qualities of Reisen and funnel them into a character who is an obnoxious, self-centered, two-bit grifter fueled by unwarranted confidence and crippling desperation.

Our story thrusts us from the seedy streets of New York’s Lower East Side to the pampered city blocks of Paris and a high-stakes competition in Tokyo to wrap it all up. After failing to secure the table tennis title in the British Open as the underdog American — falling to Koto Endo of Japan (played by real-life ping-pong player Koto Kawaguchi) — Marty loses his cool in front of the judges and gets banned from all further competitions. Not a huge deal. He can swindle his way back through hustling and petty crime; his only “obstacle,” is his childhood friend/married girlfriend Rachel Mizler (Odessa A’zion), who he sees as an invisible tether to a life of nothing special in New York.

Marty meets a plethora of individuals in his pursuit of garnering the funds to travel to Japan to compete. He tickles the fancy of a fading actress named Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow in perhaps the film’s strongest female role), whose husband is the founder of a multi-million dollar pen company (Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank). There’s also his best friend, Wally (Tyler Okonma, best known as rapper Tyler, the Creator), a taxi-driver who helps him fix ping-pong games at local bowling alleys and gin-mills. Abel Ferrara turns up as a bitterly nasty gangster with whom Marty crosses paths; Fran Drescher is Marty’s helpless mother; Penn Jillette is unrecognizable as a farmer; Luke Manley — who you might remember as the Knicks fan who made a bold statement about Trae Young in that viral video — is a loyalist Marty can’t help but abuse; fat cat businessman John Catsimatidis plays his father.

Safdie loves taking non-actors and inserting them into minor-to-major roles in his pictures. When you see the cast list for Marty Supreme, or even Uncut Gems, you’d be reasonable to assume it’s just a work of stunt casting. However, evident is Safdie’s talents as an acting coach. While it might not be a stretch for “Mr. Wonderful” to slide into the role of a wealthy, transactional shark who tries to convince Marty to commercialize his table tennis talents in a series of meaningless scrimmage games, you might come away impressed by how well O’Leary handles his own. Okonma and Chalamet have palpable chemistry as best friends, even if Okonma’s Wally knows how he’s being taken for a ride by his best friend; the same goes for Manley, who has sensitive eyes which express a tangible degree of hurt due to the way Marty abuses his kindness. Even though she’s a little marginalized by the script (which is also reflective of her place in Marty’s life), Odessa A’zion expresses the same degree of sensitivity and growing dependency on her unreliable boyfriend the more pregnant her character, Rachel, gets.

As the title suggests, this is Timothée Chalamet’s movie, even if the barrage of supporting performances wind up finding their rightful place in his corrupt world. Chalamet’s growth as an actor has been undeniable. After being somewhat swallowed by both scenery and more colorful performers on the periphery in A Rainy Day in New York and Dune: Part One, Chalamet has come into his own as a multifaceted talent capable of being both stoic (A Complete Unknown) or in this case, transcendent. He’s a fast-talking hurricane of a man; a slimy, selfish cretin who magnetizes your eyes. You believe his ability to swindle because of the charismatic and cocksure way he speaks to everyone from venture capitalists to his spouse.

The debate has already started about whether or not Marty Supreme is a sports movie. On that note, it reminded me a great deal of Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, which is structured like a sports movie. Chazelle’s movie is less about drumming and the art of music than the full-fledged commitment to greatness and the sacrifices therein. Similarly, Marty Supreme is less about the politics of table tennis and the inter-workings of the sport than it is a character study of Marty and his ceaseless efforts to make a name for himself. Even Challengers by comparison taught us more about tennis than Safdie and Bronstein care to teach us about ping-pong. That’s not a criticism, by the way. Certainly not when you consider the lengths Chalamet had to go to appear to be a capable ping pong player, and the unsettling yet captivating way in which Safdie shoots the competition sequences.

Imbued in Safdie and Bronstein’s script are the two-fold perils of capitalism: the grinder mindset and the humiliation requirement. It’s a story of a societal also-ran, who has learned early that he has to be something of an asshole in order to get where he desires to go. Then, when he meets someone with exorbitant wealth who can work in tandem with the young prodigy, the businessman instead wants him to dull his talents as a circus act, be it in Japan or with the world famous Harlem Globetrotters. Are men like Marty Mauser innately selfish, or are they bred to be that way when they get even a small taste of how people in power can abuse their talents? Safdie and Bronstein don’t quite pinpoint exactly what they feel, but there’s more than enough meet on this jittery, anxious thrill-ride to make you draw your own conclusions and have an argument for both.

Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Odessa A’zion, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin O’Leary, Tyler Okonma, Abel Ferrara, Fran Drescher, Luke Manley, John Catsimatidis, Penn Jillete, Emory Cohen, Larry “Ratso” Sloman, and Sandra Bernhard. Directed by: Josh Safdie.