Marty Supreme review: A very stressful ping pong movie

Its influence has often been overshadowed by the origins of table tennis: it was literally designed to be the miniature form of tennis, after all. But the idea of ​​”spin” first originated with the game of ping pong; Politically, it would become the matter that opened the door to negotiations between the United States and China during the Nixon era. There are nods to this in Marty Supremebut Josh Safdie’s new film is more concerned with sports as an essential setting for outcasts on the Lower East Side in the 1950s. Loosely based on the true story of Jewish table tennis player Marty Raisman, Marty Supreme He arrives eager and ready to get on your nerves.

“Loose” is the key word here, unless the real-life Raisman turns out to be a real piece of shit. This version, Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet), is as maddening as they come. Anyone who has seen the previous films of the Safdie brothers Good time or Uncut gemstones You’ll recognize the template: a man who constantly makes selfish choices, and every bad decision is an excuse to meet a strange character and run through the gorgeously photographed streets of New York City.

Like Robert Pattinson and Adam Sandler before him, Chalamet is charming but not charming also A magician, driven by his belief that he could become a table tennis champion if only he could collect the dough. The second act of the film is obsessed with Mauser’s need for money to buy a plane ticket to take him to Tokyo. All of his motivation is derived from his obsession with beating his Japanese rival Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi, who is actually a Japanese national deaf table tennis champion). Every transgression that follows is an escalation. Each character – friend, family member, or lover – is quickly betrayed in pursuit of Marty’s ping-pong ambitions.

The Safdies know how to portray this type of character, and they also know how to extract this performance from their leading men. They turned Edward Cullen into a dirtbag. They turned Billy Madison into a shitbag. Paul Atreides? Willy Wonka? Twinkle of Call me by your name? All the dirtbags are pretty good too. As Mauser, Chalamet portrays a conniving fool, a reluctant father, and an arrogant con man. But even through the pencil mustache and bushy eyebrows, Chalamet’s charisma anchors the character — or at least keeps him from being too unlikeable.

There are a number of other colorful characters that populate the film. Gwyneth Paltrow plays a movie star after her famous days. Her foolish businessman husband is played somewhat unconvincingly by Kevin O’Leary, who… Shark tank Fans will know him as “Mr. Terrific.” More impressive surprises come from Tyler Okonma (aka Tyler, The Creator) as fellow con man Ping Pong and Abel Ferrara as a funny gangster stereotype you might find in an Abel Ferrara movie. These are beautiful innovations, but the focus is uniquely on Chalamet.

Like Safdie’s movie, Marty Supreme Made me crave something new. There’s nothing wrong with a director chasing the same themes or ideas, but this latest outing feels more like a step backwards than forwards, or even sideways. (Even this fall’s other “disintegrated” character, The Gentle Thief by Josh O’Connor Mastermindis a more recent take on an idea Safadi likes.) Chalamet may make a compelling character study of self-rationalization and delusion, but how different is it from Pattinson and Sandler’s versions of this? What doesn’t help is that, thanks to its loose two-and-a-half-hour running time, this film isn’t as focused or strong as it is. Good time or Uncut gemstones.

In fact, without giving too much away, the only thing that really defines it Marty Supreme Of Safdie’s trilogy of stress tests, its ending is easily the least satisfying action in the film. There are copious scenes of a ping-pong match throughout, but by the time Mauser reaches his final match, the stakes have been lowered by the fact that his main character has already suffered a pride-crushing humiliation. The movie was probably supposed to end there, but instead it continues with the big showdown you might expect from a more traditional sports movie. It’s a gentler finale than we’re used to seeing from the Safdies; It’s also more complex.

The Safdie brothers have split over their latest film. Josh’s face Marty; Benny’s face Crushing machinea portrait of early UFC fighter Mark Kerr, a sort of transformative vehicle for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. It’s not hard to see them as similar projects: period-specific sports films powered by A24 starring famous names, with expensive needle drops and a strange preoccupation with Japan. They even have similarly unsatisfying endings.

Marty Supreme At least it has the active excitation momentum above the passive one Crushing machine. But both suffer from the same misleading assumptions. The sports gambler’s account is perhaps more pressing than the athlete’s. It is perhaps easier to judge a character by his vices rather than by his strengths. But of all our contemporary filmmakers, it’s tiresome to see the Safdie brothers go easy on their main characters.

Marty Supreme will be in theaters on December 25, 2025.