‘Marty Supreme’ Is Half a Great Movie

Whether running from the cops or making his mark at the table tennis table, Timothee Chalamet relishes playing Marty Supreme. Photo courtesy of Milwaukee Film.

If the second hour of Marty Supreme had been as convincing as the first, there would be no question about rating it as one of 2025’s best.

Alas, there is that second hour where writer-director Josh Safdie throws everything against the wall in 1950s Brooklynese clichés to enhance the allure of star Timothée Chalamet, neglecting to spend as much time as he should around the energetic table tennis sequences.

If you weren’t a fan of professional-level ping-pong before, this will grab you with sharp and blurred editing and shot-by-shot tension over the final points, as the Japanese unleash their new style of paddle, which has now become the norm, and Marty fights back with all the skill, chutzpah and mind games he can muster.

As much as he sounds like a New York character out of a Woody Allen film — brash one-liners, insulting attitude turning into groveling — Marty, with his pencil-thin mustache and angry way of spouting insults, is actually a great table tennis player and a great con artist trying to find the money to play in London, Japan or wherever for the international championship.

The film is all about his running and hustling, suggesting an almost unbelievable appeal to the opposite sex (perhaps true of Chalamet but hard to accept for the nakedly manipulative Marty).

He brazenly seduces a former screen star (Gwyneth Paltrow) because her husband has the money he needs. He has a running affair with a married childhood friend (Odessa A’zion) and gets her pregnant, deepening his love-hate relationship along the way. He tries to con a gangster over a stolen dog. He jeers the local pool hustlers and then crashes a car escaping them. He routinely bribes New York cops, who also don’t come across too honorably.

Some of the misadventures are fun, and the ping-pong gamesmanship at the end almost redeems the vagaries. But this film feels more like a way to show off the star, Chalamet, also a producer. He was involved in this project from the start (it is loosely based on a talented real ping-pong self-promoter in the 1950s).

I was never an early Chalamet fan, sometimes mystified at why his androgynous looks were drawing attention — “androgynous” is not a dirty word if you understand it. But in 2024’s A Complete Unknown, where he played and sang as Bob Dylan, he showed his acting chops.

Marty Supreme solidifies those chops, since Chalamet does well in all its phases — giddy laughter, giddy outrage, feigning remorse and genuinely weeping — though the film seems designed to let Timothée loose. In serving the star too well, Safdie moves the film away from its first-class start.

Given Warner Bros’ deal with Apple, expect Marty Supreme to arrive in late January to streaming services. For now, it is in movie theaters.

Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blog here and here. For his Dom’s Snippets, an unusual family history and memoir, go to domnoth.substack.com.