Movie Review: Marty Supreme

While I found Table Tennis more engaging than I would have expected during the last Summer Olympics, I still can’t say that I was eager to watch an entire movie built around the sport. Luckily, Marty Supreme, while very loosely inspired by the life of Marty Reisman is only nominally about ping pong. Instead, director Josh Safdie and his co-writer Ronald Bronstein are more interested in exploring the lengths someone might go when they become single-mindedly obsessed with chasing a dream.

Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) fully believes that he is the best table tennis player in the world, and he just needs to get to the British Open to prove it. He’s been working as a salesman at his uncle Murray’s (Larry “Ratso” Sloman) shoe store to save up the money and after some unexpected last-minute difficulty in obtaining it, he is off to London. Once there, he has no trouble defeating the defending champion, Bela Kletzki (Géza Röhrig), but is surprised to learn that the Japanese travel ban following World War II has been lifted and as such he will still have to beat their player, Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), whose racket and playstyle Marty is not accustomed to, leading to his defeat. While there, he also meets and seduces actress Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow) before getting an in with her husband, pen magnate Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary), in the hopes of securing a sponsorship. His ego gets the better of him though, and he manages to alienate Milton almost immediately.

Back in New York, Marty learns that he can’t play in the next World Championship in Tokyo without first paying a $1,500 fine on top of purchasing a plane ticket and so begins to scramble to raise the money. His childhood friend Rachel (Odessa A’zion) who is clearly in love with him and who he sometimes sleeps with reveals that she is pregnant with his baby, which he promptly denies. He then enlists his friend Wally (Tyler Okonma aka Tyler, the Creator) to help him hustle unsuspecting ping pong players throughout the area and gets them both in hot water before becoming entangled with a potentially dangerous man named Ezra Mishkin (Abel Ferrara), all while trying to get back in Milton and/or Kay’s good graces and avoiding his mother Rebecca (Fran Drescher), who he views as emotionally manipulative.

It’s a lot, and the razor-sharp editing, superb performances, and anachronistic, synth-heavy score by Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never) keep the audience on the edge of their seats as Marty leaves an ever‑widening trail of chaos behind him. Chalamet continues to prove that he is one of his generation’s most compelling actors, completely selling the narcissistic and conniving title character while somehow making sure that he is still likable enough for us to root for, a true feat given how abhorrent some of his behavior can be.

The sprawling, wildly unpredictable, period-set story evokes Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, but wherein that film was more of an ensemble piece, this one is all about Marty. That doesn’t mean the rest of the cast aren’t given opportunities to shine. A’zion and Paltrow in particular stand out, and O’Leary proves a far better actor than one would expect, even if he is effectively playing a heightened version of himself.

The table tennis sequences are well staged, generating a great deal of suspense during key matches, but like I said, this is not really about that. Marty’s reckless pursuit of his goal takes him and the people in his orbit on a wild ride, that almost never goes where you expect it to, but for which most of the participants end up at least temporarily worse off. Perhaps none is headed for greater ruin than Marty himself however, who is allowing the things that most of us would consider truly important to slip through his fingers. You’ll have to watch to find out for yourself if he realizes that before it’s too late, but it’s a wildly entertaining, nerve-jangling ride on the way to the answer. Perhaps the most enjoyably stressful movie of the year, Marty Supreme fully lives up to its title. ★★★★★