In 2025, brothers Josh and Benny Safdie, who had long been co-directing films in the 2010s, each pursued their own solo projects. Benny’s release this year was “The Smashing Machine,” a sports biopic starring Dwayne Johnson, and Josh’s was the heavily marketed blockbuster “Marty Supreme,” which came out at the tail end of the year. For film fans, watching each brother’s individual effort was a chance to say which Safdie really holds the reins in their partnership. While “The Smashing Machine” was underwhelming, “Marty Supreme” went above and beyond any of the Safdie’s previous films, solidifying itself for a real chance at winning Oscar awards in several categories.
“Marty Supreme” tells the story of American table tennis phenom Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet), who is loosely based on real-life player Marty Reisman, as he does everything it takes to become the greatest player in the world. This movie is set primarily in New York City in 1952, but it goes global, too, featuring competition sections in London and Tokyo. For Marty, who works as a shoe salesman, the problem lies mostly in scrounging up enough money to buy plane tickets.
It must be stressed how perfectly cast Chalamet is in this role. Marty’s ambition gets him into all sorts of trouble. His drive is at such a level that he does not think twice about scamming, tarnishing relationships, or flat-out breaking the law—all for the sake of tasting victory. Chalamet portrays Marty’s hubris with an intensity that is both unbearable and exhilarating. He spends a large part of the film attempting to escape the very issues that he created, and his actions are carried out with a hilarious level of blind confidence. Chalamet, an actor famous for his ambition, plays the overzealous Marty with the electricity we need more of in movies. It makes for a thrill-ride of a film.
A table tennis star might be a seemingly strange subject for a film, but from “Marty Supreme’s” very first scene, it becomes clear that the viewer will not have even a second to question its validity. Safdie’s films, especially “Good Time” (2017) and “Uncut Gems” (2019), are notable for their breakneck speed. There is rarely a moment in these movies where the viewers, or the characters themselves, have a chance to catch their breath. The pace of “Marty Supreme” is no different. For those who dislike movies with long, opening stretches of exposition, this film is sure to be refreshing. The viewer is dropped instantaneously into Marty’s life where he is fed up with his work at his Uncle Murray’s shoe store and antsy as ever to show the world what he can do on a ping-pong table. The people around him scoff at his dream, which only adds fuel to his fire.
When he does eventually make it to London, he loses the final match of the British Open to the Japanese Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), whose style of play is focused and reserved, contrasting starkly with Marty’s hotheadedness. Like many cocky athletes before him and up to the present day, he cannot accept his defeat, which leaves him pining for a rematch. But just as it was for London, he needs the money to get to Japan for the World Championship before facing off with Endo again.
The film goes haywire from here on out, as he ropes his pregnant girlfriend Rachel Mizler (Odessa A’zion) into his schemes, uses his taxi-driver acquaintance Wally (Tyler Okonma) as a getaway car, attempts to influence his friend Dion Galanis to manufacture “Marty Supreme” branded orange ping-pong balls, and tries to manipulate businessman Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary) into funding his trip, all while entering an affair with Rockwell’s actress wife Kay Stone (Gwenyth Paltrow). These escapades cause several subplots to unfold rapidly, forcing characters to juggle with more chaos than they can keep up with—chaos complemented magnificently with Daniel Lopatin’s lush, jittery electronic score, which ensures the film constantly feels at the highest possible stakes. The supporting characters help prop up the film to make it feel full and truly lived in. Jennifer Venditti’s casting direction could not have been better, as there are characters who look plucked directly out of a 1950s New York, and others, like Kevin O’Leary’s character, who embody the actor in real life. In his case, his character is an entrepreneurial asshole played by, of course, an entrepreneurial asshole. The supporting actors cannot be dismissed as side characters: they are the planets that orbit Marty’s immense gravitational pull.
When Timothée Chalamet said “I wanna be one of the greats” in his acceptance speech after winning a Screen Actors Guild Award for his role as Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown” (2024), some saw it as conceited. But after delivering yet another standout role in “Marty Supreme,” it is clear he has taken another step in his pursuit of greatness—more awards are sure to be coming. After all, it takes a great actor to make audiences either root for or absolutely despise a character, and in the case of Marty Mauser, he makes us do both at once.