I have often thought that Timothée Chalamet was an overrated actor. Every year, he was nominated for best performance at the Oscars, and when he didn’t win, I would hear people whine and moan, and I did not understand. He was an undeniably good actor, but he had never truly wowed me, never provided me a performance where I was left thinking about it for days afterward.
However, from now on, I can no longer consider Timothée Chalamet an overrated actor, because in “Marty Supreme,” he gave me the performance I was waiting for. This, along with the movie being extremely entertaining and nerve-wracking, makes “Marty Supreme” easily one of the best films of the year.
“Marty Supreme” follows the exploits of ping pong player Marty Mauser as he attempts to become the greatest ping pong player in the world. Most of the film, however, does not revolve around actual ping pong playing, but Marty’s various schemes to make money to try and compete in the World Championships in Tokyo. These schemes include scamming a bunch of New Jerseyans, stealing a mob boss’ car, an affair with a very rich lady, and many more. It’s quite over the top and complicated.
One of the best parts of this movie is easily it’s directing. Josh Safide does an amazing job in this film at giving every scene this sort of claustrophobic feel with a lot of tight shots and close-ups. He also does an amazing job at filming the ping-pong scenes, which feel just as exciting as any of the other great sports movies, like “Rocky 4.”
Another aspect of the film I really enjoyed was the score. It feels like a sport movies score, but really transforms into something more in the intense scenes later in the film. While it is nowhere near as good as the “Sinners” score, I do think it does a great job at showing us the world this movie inhabits. Also, it was quite an interesting choice to have the entirety of the film’s soundtrack be made up of synth songs from the 80s and 90s in a movie fully set in the 50s, but I think it provides the movie with the feel of being a classic sports film that Safdie would have watched and sort of plays with your expectation of the film.
As I already mentioned, I think one of the strongest aspects of the film was its acting, not just from Chalamet but from the entire cast. Odessa A’zion as Rachel, Marty’s girlfriend, and Kevin O’Leary as Milton Rockwell, a very rich man who just so happens to be the husband of the woman Marty is sleeping with, are easily the standout performances. A’zion really puts a lot of emotion into the performance, especially in her last major scene with Marty at the farmhouse, and O’Leary, who I’m pretty sure has never acted professionally before, does an amazing job at playing an extremely slimy character who is somehow more hateable than Marty. However, all the performances are great and stand out as an amazing part of the movie.
The plot was also great; however, there were some things that I thought could have been improved. One thing that I think is great about the movie is how it chooses to portray Marty throughout the movie. Marty is not a good person; you can tell that from the very beginning, and I will say, he doesn’t really improve at the end of this movie. However, what this movie does instead is throw Marty through a meat grinder that tortures him so thoroughly that by the end of the movie, at least for me, you can’t help but root for him. And it is an insane meatgrinder, so many twists and turns that make you go ‘Oh my god.’ This is great and makes for a fascinating film. However, I do think the contents of that meatgrinder were a little overbaked. There were a lot of storylines in this film that just felt unnecessary and padded out the run time, and they didn’t really hurt Marty enough to feel necessary. Specifically, the whole part of the movie about Marty Mauser’s ping pong balls feels extremely unimportant and honestly should have been cut from the film, despite how cool they look. While the script does an amazing job at showing us a character and why he acts, it does not do a great job at using some of their storylines to their fullest potential.
This movie is an absolute rollercoaster of a film, and is definitely a must-watch from 2025. I hope to see Timothee finally get his flowers for this film, and I can’t wait to see what kind of nightmare fuel Josh Safdie cooks up for his next film. You should definitely check it out if you have the chance, because I have a feeling this movie is going to be huge this awards season.
