'Marty Supreme' review: Timothée Chalamet goes full throttle in Josh Safdie’s high-wire sports drama

Courtesy of A24

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A super-charged, anxiety-inducing fever dream that could only come from one half of the mad genius behind 2019’s “Uncut Gems,” Josh Safdie’s “Marty Supreme” is an exhilarating, nerve-rattling spin on the sports drama. It is equal parts thrilling and confounding, powered by some of the best stunt casting in recent memory and a hyper-kinetic, barnstorming lead performance from Timothée Chalamet that feels like the performance of his career.

Chalamet plays real-life American ping pong prodigy Marty Mouser, a so-called hero who is not someone you root for, but a beautiful disaster you cannot look away from. Think of this as “Uncut Gems Jr.” If you played these two back to back, you might genuinely need your blood pressure checked. “Marty Supreme” is a ferocious meditation on what it really means to chase greatness and the eggshells, backs, and moral lines you are willing to crush in the process. This is a film that never settles, never rests, and is always hovering just above the audience, waiting to yank the rug out from under you. That constant tension can be exhausting, but it is never boring and it aggressively inverts every expectation of what a traditional sports movie is supposed to be. Whatever the marketing suggests, this is not that movie.

The film opens in a women’s shoe store in the 1950s, where Marty works as the shop’s best salesman and is seemingly on the verge of becoming a manager. But Marty is not wired for small ambitions. Outside of the store, he is already one of the most formidable table tennis players in the world at a time when the sport is largely dismissed in America. His dream is not just dominance, but transformation. He wants to turn his talent into money, status, celebrity, and eventually, his face on the front of a Wheaties box.

The problem is that Marty cannot focus for more than a few seconds at a time. “Marty Supreme” plays like a waking nightmare for anyone with attention issues as Marty ricochets from obsession to disaster. In the opening stretch alone, he reunites with a childhood friend, Rachel, played beautifully by Odessa A’Zion, and gets her pregnant in a reckless, secretive encounter. His boss, who is also his stepfather, refuses to fund Marty’s trip to Japan for the world table tennis championships, so Marty robs the store and takes what he believes he is owed.

Safdie scores these scenes with a propulsive, anachronistic energy from Daniel Lopatin, who floods the film with pulsing 80s needle drops like “Forever Young” and “Tears for Fears.” It makes no historical sense, but emotional logic has never been this film’s primary concern. The music exists to keep your heart rate elevated and your nerves fried.

Once in Japan, Marty flirts with real stardom and catches the attention of a wealthy tycoon played with unhinged confidence by Kevin O’Leary. Yes, that Kevin O’Leary from “Shark Tank,” who somehow devours Safdie and co-writer Ronald Bronstein’s dialogue with surprising skill. Marty torpedoes a lucrative deal out of pure ego, while simultaneously beginning a secret affair with the tycoon’s glamorous wife, Kay Stone, played by Gwyneth Paltrow. She is decades older than him, but Chalamet’s restless, feral charm almost makes the dynamic feel inevitable.

From there, the chaos only escalates. There are police chases through New York after Marty’s uncle calls the cops on him. There is a furious confrontation with Rachel’s husband, who discovers the child is not his. There is a half-feral drifter with an injured dog played by Abel Ferrara in one of the film’s most bizarre and strangely moving detours. The stunt casting borders on deranged, but somehow always works. O’Leary should not be this effective and Ferrara should not feel this essential, and yet Safdie gives each of them space to chew scenery and embed themselves into the film’s grime-streaked DNA.

What makes “Marty Supreme” feel dangerous is its refusal to ever let the audience breathe. At nearly two and a half hours, the film is a sustained panic attack. Every victory is followed by catastrophe. Every opportunity is undercut by ego. There are literal and figurative fires that Marty has to put out in his obsessive quest for recognition. He has very little to lose, but everything to gain, and Chalamet captures that hunger with frightening precision. By the final act, his obsession mutates into something humiliating, emasculating, and quietly tragic.

And yet, if you surrender to the chaos, the experience becomes strangely rewarding. The film’s final moments soften the edges just enough to suggest the possibility of growth. We watch a man who has burned every bridge, torched every relationship, and sold every piece of his dignity still stagger toward a version of himself that might be better than where he started. The film does not insist that Marty Mouser has changed, but it does convince you that his belief in himself, however warped, is not entirely foolish.

“Marty Supreme” is not comforting, tidy, or traditionally inspiring. It is abrasive, manic, and often exhausting. But in that chaos lies something electric. It rattles your nerves and digs under your skin. Which for a film about obsession and ambition, feels exactly right.

Grade: A

MARTY SUPREME opens in theaters Christmas Day.