Review: Marty Supreme

Image courtesy of A24.

Marty Mauser is a fast-talking huckster who uses people and has no deficits in the confidence department. He also happens to be an incredible ping pong player, and will stop at nothing to raise the money to pay for his overseas travels to compete in world tournaments. As portrayed by a very good Timothee Chalamet, Marty talks a mile a minute and is always scheming and trying to throw others off balance to get what he wants. 

Director Josh Safdie employs a unique method to translate Marty's personality into the film's overall visual and aural style. From its opening scenes, the film is meant to disorient you. The picture opens in 1952, but it's shot in the style of - and employs the acting method of - 1970s character studies about flawed individuals. The soundtrack is populated by 1980s New Wave music and includes some well-considered needle drops by Tears for Fears, The Korgis, and an especially solid usage of Peter Gabriel.

When the film opens, Marty is working at a shoe store in New York City that he later (sort of) robs, although he only takes the money that he's owed but that his boss (a relative) is withholding in an attempt to bribe him into becoming a manager. He is having an affair with a childhood friend, Rachel (Odessa A'zion), whom he will later impregnate and draw into his schemes, much to the chagrin of her ill-tempered husband (Emory Cohen).

Once he has raised enough money and fled to London to take part in a world championship ping pong tournament, he ends up in the orbit of a rich pen salesman, Milton Rockwell (Kevin O'Leary), and his once-famous actress wife, Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow). But while he glides his way to the top of the tournament - there's a great match between Marty and a pal in which they show off to impress Kay in the audience - he ends up losing to a Japanese player, Endo (Koto Kawaguchi, a real-life ping pong champion), whose impenetrable style of playing is difficult to defeat.

Nursing his wounded ego, Marty returns to America, only to find himself mixed up in numerous schemes and on the run from various individuals, all the while trying to convince Rockwell - while sleeping with his wife behind his back - to fund a rematch with Endo in Japan ahead of the next world tournament.

During its middle section, "Marty Supreme" takes some surprising turns - there's a search for a gangster's missing dog, Rachel's pregnancy, Kay's return to the stage, and the introduction of a fellow con artist portrayed by rapper Tyler the Creator, who along with Marty takes part in a ping pong hustling scheme at a bowling alley that's among the film's best sequences.

Meanwhile, Safdie - who started his career with his brother Benny by churning out gritty, low-budget New York-centric crime sagas such as "Heaven Knows What," "Good Time," and the superb "Uncut Gems" - populates the film with a Who's Who of New York figures, from legendary director Abel Ferrara as the aforementioned gangster to Fran Drescher, Sandra Bernhard, Penn Jillette, and even grocery store magnate John Catsimatidis. 

It's an amusing - and, perhaps, not entirely inconsequential - time to release a film, which is dominated every minute by Chalamet's committed performance, about a slick American huckster who is constantly burdened by the thought that he might not be considered as anything other than the best at everything he does. The manner in which he responds to failure also rings a familiar bell to another New Yorker, albeit one of unfortunate national consequence, who has a massive - though unwarranted - ego. 

For a movie about table tennis, "Marty Supreme" is often thrilling and the high-octane matches alone are worth the price of admission. As I'd mentioned, Chalamet is a real force of nature in this film as the titular character, who might at the same time be the smartest and most annoying person in the room at any point in the picture. This is a great character study and one of the year's most memorable movies.