Marty Supreme (2025) dir. Josh Safdie

Timothée Chalamet is dynamite playing a conniving little shit table tennis player in this new thriller from Josh Safdie.

In the weeks leading up to the release of Marty Supreme (2025), you might have seen Timothée Chalamet do an impressive number of stunts to promote the picture. You might have seen him star in a music video for EsDeeKid, a British rapper with his likeness. You may have seen him scale the Sphere stadium in Las Vegas. Or you may have come across one of his press tours on social media, where his buzzcut hairstyle and brightly colored sweatsuits made him look like the SoundCloud rapper he plays whenever he hosts SNL.

You can look at these with a variety of impressions, from incredulity to humor to outright contempt. It’s all certainly ostentatious. Or, after you watch his most impressive role yet in Marty Supreme (2025), you might think he was foreshadowing the film the entire time.

Taking inspiration from the life of Marty Reisman, Marty Supreme is a tale about unchecked ambition. Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, a Jewish tennis table player who’s desperate to make a name for himself in his sport and escape the dull life he lives in the Lower East Side of New York. After robbing his uncle’s safe for money to travel to London for the World Championship, he returns to find himself caught up in the whirlwinds of his own schemes. In order to get to Tokyo to face off against the reigning champion, he’ll have to resort to desperate lengths to get the money.

One of my favorite characters to watch onscreen is character you hate to love. What’s so fascinating about them is how utterly repulsive they are. And Marty Mauser certainly fits the bill. His mind is set like a missile launcher on becoming the best at table tennis, no matter what the cost or how many people he betrays along the way. He’s relentless, refuses to take responsibility when it doesn’t benefit him, and has no qualms about scamming incredibly powerful people if it means it gets him closer. This is definitely not the kind of guy you’d want to have a drink with.

But at the same time, Chalamet’s performance lures you in with how charming he is. Gwyneth Paltrow’s character is a sort of audience surrogate. She knows Marty’s full of shit from their first phone call, but she’s so charmed by him she keeps coming back to him even when it’s inconvenient for both of them. Not to mention there’s something perversely relatable about Marty’s quest for greatness. He sees himself as the underdog, desperate to prove it’s lethal to underestimate him. He wants glory as soon as possible. As a recent college graduate suffered from a bad case of senioritis, I could see shades of myself in Marty, although none that would see the lengths that Marty goes to as justifiable. But understandable? Yep.

The best part about this movie, besides Chalamet’s stellar performance, is how you don’t know where the plot is going. Sometimes a film’s execution can mar the result, but this time I was on the edge of my seat throughout the whole thing. Even the brief moments of pause are interrupted by a startling new revelation that makes the entire story feel more like an odyssey. You don’t feel fatigued by the end of this movie, or a sense of relief. The only thing you feel a rush of energy that comes from the knowledge that you have just witnessed and lived through something incredible.

FURTHER THOUGHTS

• Tyler, the Creator is in this, and he is awesome.
• Daniel Lopatin’s score reminds me of what Challengers would have been if it was remixed with The Substance.
• That final 80s song will throw you for a loop.