Marty Supreme plays an engrossing and chaotic game only director Josh Safdie could realize

Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) wants to win. Badly. This 23-year-old makes his income as a shoe salesman in New York, harbors a secret relationship with married lady Rachel Mizler (Odessa A'zion), and dedicates himself to the ping-pong world. This is 1953. Most in America haven't even heard of the game. But Mauser is convinced he's the American legend this game needs. So deep is his conviction that he'll do anything to make it in the global ping-pong championships, including taking some money he's "owed" from his uncle and (playfully) holding people at gunpoint.

Mauser speaks a mile a minute, exudes immense confidence, and is always selling something (namely himself). He's also got no money, and the consequences of his short-sighted actions tend to come back and bite him tenfold. In other words, he's the kind of hapless, sweaty, and frantic protagonist that's defined so much of writer/director Josh Safide's work (see also: Good Time, Daddy Longlegs, Uncut Gems). Mauser fully believes he's destined for the big time. He'll do anything to get there. He's got his eyes on the ball, but actually striking that ball is a whole other story.

In 2002, country music legends Brooks & Dunn posited that "You can take the girl out of the honky tonk But you can't take the honky tonk /take the honky tonk out of the girl." Marty Supreme similarly proves you can take Josh Safdie out of scrappy indie fare, but you can't take the scrappy indie fare out of Josh Safdie. This $70 million budgeted has a far bigger scope than The Pleasure of Being Robbed, but Safdie's gift for captivatingly intense chaos hasn’t been lost in the process. More dollar bills hasn’t resulted in a feature any less armrest-clenching than Howard Ratner's exploits across New York City's Diamond District.

Happily, that unpredictability is filtered heavily through often hysterical dark comedy. Much like fellow 2025 cinema winner Weapons was an uber-refined campfire yarn, Marty Supreme is often an extra grimy take on a screwball comedy. One thing after another goes wrong for Marty Mauser as his various transgressions and mishaps pile on top of each other. No betrayal or act of thievery goes unchecked here. Everything gets either a payoff or amusing escalation. In his own unique way, Josh Safdie keeps the spirit of Bringing Up Baby and Design for Living alive and well.

Channeling those motion pictures ensures Marty Supreme is a riot for its entire runtime. It’s all go-go-go disorder constantly serving up outsized laughs and tremendously memorable performances. Those turns hail from an incredibly eclectic cast* that includes everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to Phillippe Petit to Géza Röhrig to even Mitchell Wenig, one of the twins from Uncut Gems. Beyond just delivering electric acting, the wide array of Marty Supreme performers amusingly reflects just how obsessive Marty Mauser is. He’ll go anywhere and talk to anyone to turn his ambitions into tangible reality. How else to explain his exploits including encounters with characters played by Tyler the Creator and Abel Ferrara?

As the camera follows Mauser encountering these various colorful characters, I was reminded how glorious the lived-in aesthetic of Safdie’s work is. One of Mauser’s go-to New York spots I a dingy pool hall full of ping-pong players. One look at this place and you can discern decades of wear and tear in every inch of these walls. I could suddenly feel the textures of those rickety ping-pong tables or taste the cigarette smoke clouding up the air. Populating these domiciles with transfixing non-professional actors amplifies their realism.

Much like Good Time and Uncut Gems, Marty Supreme chronicles realms so fascinatingly exuding reality. It feels like audiences are flies on the wall watching all this stressful turmoil play out in real time. Chalk this quality also up to Darius Khondji’s 35mm cinematography. Shooting on film lends Marty Supreme an incredibly riveting look. Colors pop off the screen, and the occasional flickers of film-based imperfections perfectly complement both Supreme’s 1953 setting and the ramshackle world Marty Mauser is concocting. Plus, this style of shooting harkens back to vintage Big Apple indie movies (like Ferrara's most famous works). Marty Supreme successfully channels Ms. 45 in its visual aesthetic rather than contemporary digital drivel.  

For many reading this review, though, Khondji’s cinematography or the excellent Daniel Lopatin score aren't what you want to know. Marty Supreme is being marketed as the Timothée Chalamet and it's his performance that everyone's eagerly awaiting word on.

I technically saw Chalamet for the first time in a movie in Interstellar, but the first time he left a major impression was playing conspiratorial fuckboi Kyle Scheible in Lady Bird. Here, Chalamet was so cringingly in touch with reality, portraying an aloof guy obsessed with "secret" government schemes and much less privy to the feelings of the film's titular lead. His comic timing and willingness to play someone so jaggedly imperfect were impressive. Those qualities materialize yet again with Marty Supreme. Here, Chalamet is playing a guy so consumed with intense energy that it’s a wonder Marty Mauser doesn’t pop a blood vessel.

Chalamet proves a natural with Safdie and Ronald Bronstein’s trademark style of motormouth dialogue. He’s also so smooth at playing Mauser’s in salesman mode. There are moments where it’s totally clear why this 23-year-old keeps winning people over thanks to Chalamet’s charms. He can get viewers temporarily invested in Mauser’s hairbrained schemes even when the character’s flaws and downfall are evident. Part huckster, part humorous loser, part insufferable dreamer (complimentary), plus a pinch of an engaging underdog protagonist, Chalamet’s performance has got it all. Unlike in last year’s A Complete Unknown, where he was just doing a cover of Bob Dylan’s mannerisms, Marty Supreme lets Chalamet deliver a freshly singular performance.

Odessa A'zion is the other major standout in Supreme’s sprawling cast, particularly with her ability to exude a consistently tangible personality in scenes where she’s playing opposite Chalamet. This leading man is going for it, but A’zion can 100% keep step with him. Meanwhile, Luke Manley and Tyler Konma are incredibly engaging in supporting turns as tragically supportive figures to Mauser that get caught in his toxic gravitational pull.

Just as magnetic as any Marty Supreme actor is the film’s editing, courtesy of Bronstein and Safdie. The duo makes any ping pong-heavy sequence extraordinarily absorbing. It's always a thrill when sports movies get me on the edge of my seat for athletic displays I don't care about in real life. So it is with Marty Supreme, which had me clutching my fists and quietly murmuring "oooo" as uncertainty consumed the screen. Marty Mauser is far from a surefire winner in his escapades. All that dynamite editing, though, encapsulates how Marty Supreme is downright triumphant as a cinematic experience.

* I do have to dock some points, though, for casting right-wing doofuses like David Mamet and Kevin O'Leary in this. Platforming and normalizing these guys is the wrong kind of gag-inducing. Please give these gigs to folks who aren't cheering on fascism.