‘Marty Supreme’ Review: Timothée Chalamet’s Ping-Pong Devil
The actor gives a staggering performance as a fast-talking, fast-playing, utterly obnoxious table-tennis whiz in Josh Safdie’s unconventional drama.
“Drama is very important to me. I can’t undercut the drama,” notes one of the year’s most deeply carved cinematic characters, Marty Mauser, played by Timothée Chalamet with a staggering commitment to being as abrasive, obnoxious and offensive as he possibly can. Drama is his reason for being: This fast-talking, acne-scarred lizard is forever slipping out of tight corners, usually setting himself up for even worse trouble.
Certain to be rated the greatest 2 1/2-hour ping-pong movie ever, “Marty Supreme” takes a tired formula—the underdog sports story—only to pull it apart and reassemble it with wicked intent, like a psychotic toddler experimenting on his sister’s hapless doll. What if, ask Mr. Chalamet and writer-director Josh Safdie, that sport were a third-tier one that hardly anybody cares about, what if the story wandered off on tangents of tangents, and what if its central figure were really an antihero—not a plucky up-and-comer but a seamy, scheming scammer? Cross John McEnroe with Ratso Rizzo and you’ll have some idea of whom you’ll be spending this long, discursive trip with.
Marty is a penniless shoe salesman and highly ranked table-tennis player in 1952 New York who, before the opening titles roll, has already cheated a customer and impregnated his (married) girlfriend (Odessa A’zion) in a back room of a shoe store. Correctly described as a “pimple-faced bum,” he needs to raise money to get to London for a tournament, so he helps himself to the boss’s stash. In the U.K., an implacable Japanese opponent, Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), flusters him with an unusual technique and wins easily, leaving Marty to sputter angrily about the result and run up a huge fine. He spends much of the rest of the film trying to raise money to pay the fine and attend a rematch, this time in Japan, that won’t even be an official contest.
Mr. Chalamet, who is onscreen virtually nonstop and moves around it like a rooster on fire, can certainly turn on the charm when he wants to, as in “Wonka.” This time he’s the kind of guy who says, of a Holocaust survivor, “I’m gonna do to [him] what Auschwitz couldn’t!” (It’s OK, he’s Jewish himself, he says.) His inevitable triumph in the Far East, he promises, will amount to dropping a third atom bomb on Japan. He has so much unjustified confidence that he manages to seduce a washed-up 1930s actress, Kay Stone (played by Gwyneth Paltrow with a mix of disbelief, anger and poignancy), while trying to butter up her husband, a pen magnate (Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank”) who might want to sponsor Marty for an exhibition intended to help build his brand in Japan but who also clearly hates the presumptuous little scoundrel.
Mr. Safdie and his co-writer, Ronald Bronstein, taking as a starting point the life of ’50s table-tennis player Marty Reisman, have designed a script that jerks around in unpredictable and danger-heralding ways, like the crackling fuse leading on a twisting path to a pile of dynamite in a cartoon. A chunk of the story involves a bathtub mishap, a dog gone missing, and a table-tennis hustling jaunt to New Jersey, where Marty wins hundreds of dollars by pretending to be a racist in the company of a black friend.
The co-conspirator is played by Tyler Okonma, aka the rap artist Tyler, the Creator. He is one of several out-of-context celebrities who help bolster the off-kilter atmosphere by popping in unexpectedly: Isaac Mizrahi, David Mamet and Penn Jillette are among the others. Perhaps the best of them is “Bad Lieutenant” director Abel Ferrara, who, like Mr. O’Leary, adds a scary element as one of the antagonists who is forever screaming at Marty, who richly deserves it, being something of a human tornado who seems to get several people killed over the course of events.
Having seen the film twice, I liked it more the second time, when I started to appreciate Marty to a degree. Irritating, exasperating and irredeemable, he is nevertheless a darkly funny member of the cinematic rogues’ gallery that includes Henry Hill of “Goodfellas” and Leonardo DiCaprio’s desperate-to-stay-afloat characters in such releases as “Catch Me If You Can.” Yet “Marty Supreme” is an undisguised attempt to recreate the gonzo feel of Mr. Safdie’s one hit, 2019’s “Uncut Gems,” made with his brother, Benny, before the two split up. The new effort suffers from the comparison.
The main difference is that the previous feature made it so easy to root for its protagonist, Adam Sandler’s jeweler-gambler-philanderer, despite his bad behavior and addiction to ever-riskier situations. Marty, though, is so contemptible that seeing him get fed into a wood chipper or dined on by a pack of wild dogs would have been a perfectly satisfying outcome; the third act Mr. Safdie instead delivers seems borrowed from a much more conventional school of filmmaking, and hence lands awkwardly. Still, for those who complain that movies are too pat and formulaic, “Marty Supreme” is mostly a bracing tonic—pungent, wild and weird.
“Drama is very important to me. I can’t undercut the drama,” notes one of the year’s most deeply carved cinematic characters, Marty Mauser, played by Timothée Chalamet with a staggering commitment to being as abrasive, obnoxious and offensive as he possibly can. Drama is his reason for being: This fast-talking, acne-scarred lizard is forever slipping out of tight corners, usually setting himself up for even worse trouble.
Certain to be rated the greatest 2 1/2-hour ping-pong movie ever, “Marty Supreme” takes a tired formula—the underdog sports story—only to pull it apart and reassemble it with wicked intent, like a psychotic toddler experimenting on his sister’s hapless doll. What if, ask Mr. Chalamet and writer-director Josh Safdie, that sport were a third-tier one that hardly anybody cares about, what if the story wandered off on tangents of tangents, and what if its central figure were really an antihero—not a plucky up-and-comer but a seamy, scheming scammer? Cross John McEnroe with Ratso Rizzo and you’ll have some idea of whom you’ll be spending this long, discursive trip with.
Marty is a penniless shoe salesman and highly ranked table-tennis player in 1952 New York who, before the opening titles roll, has already cheated a customer and impregnated his (married) girlfriend (Odessa A’zion) in a back room of a shoe store. Correctly described as a “pimple-faced bum,” he needs to raise money to get to London for a tournament, so he helps himself to the boss’s stash. In the U.K., an implacable Japanese opponent, Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), flusters him with an unusual technique and wins easily, leaving Marty to sputter angrily about the result and run up a huge fine. He spends much of the rest of the film trying to raise money to pay the fine and attend a rematch, this time in Japan, that won’t even be an official contest.
Mr. Chalamet, who is onscreen virtually nonstop and moves around it like a rooster on fire, can certainly turn on the charm when he wants to, as in “Wonka.” This time he’s the kind of guy who says, of a Holocaust survivor, “I’m gonna do to [him] what Auschwitz couldn’t!” (It’s OK, he’s Jewish himself, he says.) His inevitable triumph in the Far East, he promises, will amount to dropping a third atom bomb on Japan. He has so much unjustified confidence that he manages to seduce a washed-up 1930s actress, Kay Stone (played by Gwyneth Paltrow with a mix of disbelief, anger and poignancy), while trying to butter up her husband, a pen magnate (Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank”) who might want to sponsor Marty for an exhibition intended to help build his brand in Japan but who also clearly hates the presumptuous little scoundrel.
{{/usCountry}}Mr. Chalamet, who is onscreen virtually nonstop and moves around it like a rooster on fire, can certainly turn on the charm when he wants to, as in “Wonka.” This time he’s the kind of guy who says, of a Holocaust survivor, “I’m gonna do to [him] what Auschwitz couldn’t!” (It’s OK, he’s Jewish himself, he says.) His inevitable triumph in the Far East, he promises, will amount to dropping a third atom bomb on Japan. He has so much unjustified confidence that he manages to seduce a washed-up 1930s actress, Kay Stone (played by Gwyneth Paltrow with a mix of disbelief, anger and poignancy), while trying to butter up her husband, a pen magnate (Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank”) who might want to sponsor Marty for an exhibition intended to help build his brand in Japan but who also clearly hates the presumptuous little scoundrel.
{{/usCountry}}Mr. Safdie and his co-writer, Ronald Bronstein, taking as a starting point the life of ’50s table-tennis player Marty Reisman, have designed a script that jerks around in unpredictable and danger-heralding ways, like the crackling fuse leading on a twisting path to a pile of dynamite in a cartoon. A chunk of the story involves a bathtub mishap, a dog gone missing, and a table-tennis hustling jaunt to New Jersey, where Marty wins hundreds of dollars by pretending to be a racist in the company of a black friend.
The co-conspirator is played by Tyler Okonma, aka the rap artist Tyler, the Creator. He is one of several out-of-context celebrities who help bolster the off-kilter atmosphere by popping in unexpectedly: Isaac Mizrahi, David Mamet and Penn Jillette are among the others. Perhaps the best of them is “Bad Lieutenant” director Abel Ferrara, who, like Mr. O’Leary, adds a scary element as one of the antagonists who is forever screaming at Marty, who richly deserves it, being something of a human tornado who seems to get several people killed over the course of events.
Having seen the film twice, I liked it more the second time, when I started to appreciate Marty to a degree. Irritating, exasperating and irredeemable, he is nevertheless a darkly funny member of the cinematic rogues’ gallery that includes Henry Hill of “Goodfellas” and Leonardo DiCaprio’s desperate-to-stay-afloat characters in such releases as “Catch Me If You Can.” Yet “Marty Supreme” is an undisguised attempt to recreate the gonzo feel of Mr. Safdie’s one hit, 2019’s “Uncut Gems,” made with his brother, Benny, before the two split up. The new effort suffers from the comparison.
The main difference is that the previous feature made it so easy to root for its protagonist, Adam Sandler’s jeweler-gambler-philanderer, despite his bad behavior and addiction to ever-riskier situations. Marty, though, is so contemptible that seeing him get fed into a wood chipper or dined on by a pack of wild dogs would have been a perfectly satisfying outcome; the third act Mr. Safdie instead delivers seems borrowed from a much more conventional school of filmmaking, and hence lands awkwardly. Still, for those who complain that movies are too pat and formulaic, “Marty Supreme” is mostly a bracing tonic—pungent, wild and weird.
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