Marty Supreme Review: Josh Safdie's Ping Pongs Through a Variety of Emotions

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There are moments in Marty Supreme where you go "Yep, a Safdie made this." It's found in the frenetic, anxiety-inducing plot, and their proven narrative technique of emphasizing how one wrong decision can affect an entire life. Watching Timothee Chalamet run around New York City trying to fix his many screw-ups immediately reminds you of Robert Pattinson in Good Time or Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems. And yet Marty Supreme never feels like a rip-off of either of those two features but a wholly original, fun, and frantic story about one man's hubris and his struggle to win at any costs.

Marty Mauser (Chalamet) has a dream of becoming a Ping Pong champion. But after being beaten by the representative to Japan at a global tournament, Marty is determined to come back stronger and win. But his taciturn and entitled personality puts him at odds with nearly everyone he meets. And a series of bad decisions involving his relationships, money, and ambition threaten the comeback he believes he deserves.

Safdie makes a comparison between Marty's world of 1952 New York and the Cold War era of the 1980s that isn't found in its New Wave soundtrack, but in how the movie inhabits a "more is more" mentality. Marty routinely believes he's better. Better than being a shoe salesman. Better than living with his mother. Better than anyone he encounters. To him, greed isn't good, it's essential. And that greed manifests particularly in his belief that he, above everyone else, is important.

The West vs. Red China plot line has been done to death, specifically throughout the 1980s, and Safdie and cowriter Ronald Bronstein do something unique. The U.S. versus Japan plot line runs parallel to Marty's personal struggles to actually make it to Japan to redeem himself. The 1952 time period is just seven years after Japan surrendered in WWII, and yet the '80s trappings emphasize it as just another element that, thirty-odd years later, the U.S. would duke out with China and Russia (albeit not to the same extent).

Marty is irritated that the Japanese travel ban is lifted, allowing them to compete and he sees this as another opportunity to take the country down for what happened in the war. Marty himself sees himself as an American savior. Yet there's never an attempt to demonize the Japanese, who see player Koto (Koto Kawaguchi) as a national hero. It's never focused on but it stands out that Koto is Deaf. He has a true underdog story that, in a more formulaic look at disability, would be played up as a reason he should win. How Safdie and Bronstein resolve that, without diving into pity or stereotype, is interesting.

For Safdie and Bronstein, there's a Greek tragedy mentality underlining everything Marty Supreme. It's easy to see the Coen brothers influencers (particularly Inside Llewyn Davis) in how Marty navigates, and continually screws up, his world starting with his relationship with Rachel (Odessa A'zion). Their tryst at Marty's place of work kickstarts one of several questionable decisions he'll make over the next two hours. It also gives us a Look Who's Talking-esque opening credits sesequence to Alphaville's "Forever Young" where a fertilized egg makes way for the title.

Chalamet is pitch perfect in the role. He's venal. He's disgusting. He's rude. At one point, during an interview, he talks about how he's going to "do to Kletzki what Auschwitz didn't." Mind you, he's speaking about his friend, Bela (Geza Rohrig). Chalamet, one of the more famous young actors today, is playing a character that non-Chalamet lovers will probably think isn't acting. That's because, in Chalamet's hands, Marty is a man constantly in the thrall of show business. He's the P.T. Barnum of Ping Pong, albeit selling himself as the greatest of all time. He's American exceptionalism in one human. At one point he demands the Ping Pong tournament organizers put him up in the best hotel because he "knows" he's going to win and thinks it'd be an embarrassment if people found out the winner wasn't feted.

Yet there's always an undercurrent of comedy running through the asinine things Marty says. At the end of the day, he's a 22-year-old kid who doesn't know how the world works. It's comical to watch him and his collaborator Dion (wonderfully played by Luke Manley) try to hold a business meeting with Dion's dad. Dion says they're "men talking business" but Darius Khondji's flawless cinematography makes them look like little kids playing at being adults.

Marty desperately wants to make everything about Ping Pong and yet Marty Supreme sings best when it's not about that. Marty, through a series of shenanigans, isn't able to get to Japan and must raise a significant amount of money to make the trip. He's forced to rely on numerous people--many of whom he's burned--to help him. This includes Rachel and an actress he hooks up with, Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow). Paltrow is solid, but there's little depth to her. She's the exasperated older woman shocked and attracted at Marty's chutzpah. She doesn't really come into her own until the resolution of her plot line, when she's found to be just as selfish as Marty is.

A'zion as Rachel is the captivating leading lady of Marty Supreme. Not cut from the Julia Fox style of Safdie women (go look at The Smashing Machine if that's what you want), Rachel is a 1950s woman desperately for excitement and genuine love. She unfortunately loves Marty, who refuses to see that her freak matches his. Every scene A'zion has, though, is magnetic, funny, and exciting, particularly her attempts to return a stolen dog in the hopes of getting Marty his money. Mind you, Marty later tells Rachel she has no purpose. But that's the point of Marty Supreme. Marty believes he is the exceptional man, the only man of significance, and yet what is it about others who desperately want to be part of his world?

"I can't undercut the drama," Marty says at one point and that's certainly true of Marty Supreme in general. The movie is all drama, so much so that the stress of watching Marty and his friends engage in trying to get money might stress you out. By the end of the movie, when things finally settle down and Marty has reached the end of his story it's a moment of relief for the viewer, if not the culmination of a life for the character.

Marty Supreme is a movie that, if it doesn't instantly draw you in and snap you up, it will later. A rapid-fire story of superiority wrapped up in a burning performance by Timothee Chalamet. Even a Safdie naysayer will find something to be charmed by.

Grade: B+

Marty Supreme hits theaters Christmas Day.

Upcoming Popcorn Disabilities Events

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