{"id":108650,"date":"2025-12-25T10:55:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T10:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/108650\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T10:55:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T10:55:24","slug":"marty-supreme-review-timothee-chalamet-serves-up-big-swagger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/108650\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Marty Supreme’ review: Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet serves up big swagger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A ping-pong ball at top speed travels over 70 miles an hour \u2014 so fast it could zip across Manhattan in less than two minutes. Director Josh Safdie\u2019s<\/a> hyperactive, head-spinning \u201cMarty Supreme\u201d keeps pace. Set in 1952 New York, this deranged caper races after a money-grubbing table tennis hustler (he prefers \u201cprofessional athlete\u201d) named Marty Mauser (Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet<\/a>) who argues like he plays, swatting away protests and annoying his adversaries to exhaustion.<\/p>\n

Hounding his shoe-store co-worker to give him $700 from the safe, Marty hammers the poor sap with every trick he\u2019s got \u2014 emotional pressure, physical violence, bribery, humiliation, revenge \u2014 until he hits one that wins. The high-strung kid is pure nerve and he looks like one, too; he\u2019s the embodiment of a twitch. But with a paddle in his hands, Marty turns into Gene Kelly in \u201cSingin\u2019 in the Rain<\/a>.\u201d He could win a match swinging an umbrella.<\/p>\n

The character\u2019s inspiration is Marty Reisman<\/a>, one of the so-called \u201cbad boys of ping-pong,\u201d according to a U.S. Table Tennis Assn. official in 1972, explaining why the rascal wasn\u2019t invited to the USA versus China exhibition games referred to as \u201cping-pong diplomacy.\u201d<\/a> You may remember those matches from \u201cForrest Gump,\u201d<\/a> but Tom Hanks\u2019 guileless sweetheart would never use the sport to smuggle gold bars out of Hong Kong, as the real Reisman once did.<\/p>\n

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Reisman\u2019s exploits, immortalized in his 1974 memoir \u201cThe Money Player,\u201d are too outrageous to squeeze into one film, even for a chaos-feeding filmmaker such as Safdie, going solo after co-directing \u201cGood Time\u201d<\/a> and \u201cUncut Gems\u201d<\/a> with his brother Benny. (A trilogy, maybe.) Reisman\u2019s biography opened with him fleeing French-occupied Hanoi, Vietnam, the day before it fell to the Viet Minh and detoured to a meeting with the Pope in Rome before drunkenly landing a plane in Brazil. The book was optioned shortly after publication. He felt it should star Robert De Niro.<\/p>\n

That movie never happened and Reisman died in 2012 at the age of 82, still insisting he deserved to bask in the spotlight. He\u2019d be happy to see Safdie\u2019s \u201cMarty Supreme,\u201d which time-travels audiences back seven decades to when American table tennis players were certain bright days were ahead.<\/p>\n

As an athlete, Chalamet seems to have lost muscle for the role. Yet as funny as it is to see a guy this scrawny carry himself like Hercules, he leaps and strikes with conviction. His Marty yearns for prestige. Safdie even concocts a subplot in which he invents his signature orange ball solely so he can wear all-white like the posh jocks of Wimbledon. He starts the film desperate to fly to a tournament in London, in part to escape the walk-up apartment where he\u2019s always squabbling with his mother (Fran Drescher<\/a>) and uncle (Larry \u201cRatso\u201d Sloman<\/a>) and a nosy neighbor (Sandra Bernhard<\/a>). Perilously, Marty\u2019s secret lover (a simmering Odessa A\u2019zion<\/a>) lives with her jealous husband (Emory Cohen<\/a>) in an apartment one floor below.<\/p>\n

Marty and A\u2019zion\u2019s Rachel belong together, if only to quarantine their equally manipulative genes from the general population. Before the opening credits, the couple improvises a lie to get some privacy to mate. Cinematographer Darius Khondji<\/a> sends the camera inside her body to see Marty\u2019s most aggressive sperm wriggle to the finish line. Rachel\u2019s egg becomes the moon; the moon becomes a ping-pong ball. Game on.<\/p>\n

From this scene forward, Marty will dash around the city and the globe, chasing his dreams and out-running his parental responsibilities. Along the way, he trips over a gun-toting gangster named Ezra (Abel Ferrara<\/a>), a faded movie star, Kay (Gwyneth Paltrow<\/a>, sullen and aloof), and her callous husband Milton (\u201cShark Tank\u201d investor Kevin O\u2019Leary<\/a>), the chief executive of a pen corporation who thinks Marty can make him a mint in ping-pong-crazed Asia. O\u2019Leary, a first-time actor, easily embodies the face of capitalism.<\/p>\n

Flaunting that he can turn anyone into an actor, Safdie crowds his New York with bit parts played by big personalities: magician Penn Jillette<\/a>, fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi<\/a>, basketball player George \u201cThe Iceman\u201d Gervin<\/a>, highwire artist Philippe Petit<\/a>, playwright David Mamet<\/a>, journalist Naomi Fry<\/a> and grocery tycoon John Catsimatidis<\/a>. The musician Tyler Okonma<\/a>, better known as the Tyler, the Creator, is great in his feature film acting debut as Willy, Marty\u2019s gambling wingman. He was previously seen onscreen getting electrocuted by a piano in \u201cJackass Forever.\u201d<\/a> Okonma brings that same energy here and it\u2019s perfect.<\/p>\n

Marty\u2019s main foe \u2014 and personality opposite \u2014 is a Japanese player named Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi) who lost his hearing in the Tokyo airstrikes that happened seven years before and uses a deadly quiet foam-backed paddle. Marty\u2019s friendliest rival, B\u00e9la (G\u00e9za R\u00f6hrig<\/a>), survived Auschwitz, and in a jaw-dropper of a scene, shares a story of endurance that actually happened to the Polish player Alex Ehrlich. Imprisoned in the camps shortly after winning silver at the World Championships in 1939, Ehrlich was renowned for a record-breaking competitive volley that lasted over two hours, a back-and-forth so relentless that the referee quit with a sore neck. The rhythm of it could be a metronome for this movie\u2019s plot \u2014 it whips us around to the point of delighted collapse.<\/p>\n

The soundtrack is an unexpected backbeat of synth hits by Tears for Fears<\/a> and New Order<\/a> that bleeds into a Tangerine Dream-esque score by Daniel Lopatin<\/a> \u2014 a startling choice for an era where people act like World War II happened yesterday. But to our modern ears, the music has its own vintage: It\u2019s the sound of the greed-is-good 1980s, when movies rooted for ruthless strivers such as \u201cRisky Business\u2019\u201d Tom Cruise<\/a>, who opened a brothel in his parents\u2019 bedroom.<\/p>\n

Safdie\u2019s script, co-written by Ronald Bronstein<\/a>, is even structured like an \u201980s movie that builds up to the big showdown, be it a ski race, a car-washing competition or a frat house decathlon \u00e0 la \u201cRevenge of the Nerds.\u201d <\/a>The catch is that Marty \u2014 not Endo \u2014 may be the bully who deserves to lose. How loudly are we willing to cheer for a callow guy who thinks of WWII as an opportunity for trash talk, boasting he\u2019ll \u201cdrop a third bomb\u201d on Endo\u2019s fans? (In fairness, Tokyo promotes their rematch with a poster of Marty that looks uncomfortably close to antisemitic Nazi propaganda, a pointed choice by Safdie and the production designer Jack Fisk<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Marty is convinced he\u2019s a self-made success who doesn\u2019t need anyone\u2019s help; the people we see him squeeze and squash would disagree. He\u2019s similar to Adam Sandler\u2019s<\/a> rapacious jeweler in \u201cUncut Gems,\u201d except that scoundrel contained his damage to the Diamond District and people as shady as him. Safdie sends Marty out to bedevil the world, shipping him to Paris where he gets snippy with a ma\u00eetre d\u2019 who doesn\u2019t speak English and then to Cairo where he steals a chunk of the Great Pyramids. <\/p>\n

Listening to a Japanese newsreel describe him as a villain referred to only as \u201cthe American,\u201d you realize that \u201cMarty Supreme\u201d is more than a caricature of Reisman. It\u2019s a biography of our national ego, with Marty brashly lecturing the British head of the International Table Tennis Assn. that a champion from the United States would boost the sport\u2019s global reputation. After the commissioner makes this conceited Yank grovel, Marty simply replies: \u201cIt\u2019s every man for himself where I come from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Marty, Chalamet was raised in New York City, and since he arrived on the scene, there\u2019s never been a doubt he\u2019ll win an Oscar. The only question is, when? To Chalamet\u2019s credit, he\u2019s doing it the hard way, avoiding sentimental pictures for pricklier roles about his own naked ambitions. For \u201cA Complete Unknown,\u201d he taught himself to play guitar like Bob Dylan<\/a> while revealing that the bard was a rat, and in the even-better \u201cDune: Part Two,\u201d<\/a> played a naif radicalized into a galaxy-destroying messiah. <\/p>\n

Here, Chalamet again fuses his personal drive into his performance, claiming that he spent seven years training to play ping-pong like Reisman, and unlike Tom Hanks in \u201cGump,\u201d he\u2019s doing his own stunts. Voters seem content to let the young talent dangle, trusting that he\u2019ll continue flogging himself to make more great pictures like this.<\/p>\n

The movie\u2019s moxie makes it impossible not to get caught up in Marty\u2019s crusade. We\u2019re giddy even when he\u2019s miserable. Performing with the Harlem Globetrotters<\/a> in some of the most war-scarred, joy-desperate corners of the planet, his own shame prevents him from appreciating how much he\u2019s entertaining the crowd. When you weigh his selfish desires against any other character\u2019s needs, Marty is as hollow as a ping-pong ball. It really is all about his balls. Their embossing reads: \u201cMarty Supreme \u2014 Made in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

‘Marty Supreme’<\/p>\n

Rated: R, for language throughout, sexual content, some violent content\/bloody images and nudity<\/p>\n

Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes<\/p>\n

Playing: In wide release Thursday, Dec. 25<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A ping-pong ball at top speed travels over 70 miles an hour \u2014 so fast it could zip…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1924,58437,58436,48,52,51,47,50,49,58433,58434,48076,4287,4694,58438,1459,592,50524,58435,2489,33718],"class_list":{"0":"post-108650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-film","9":"tag-first-time-actor","10":"tag-koto-endo","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-la-headlines","13":"tag-la-news","14":"tag-los-angeles","15":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","16":"tag-los-angeles-news","17":"tag-marty-mauser","18":"tag-marty-reisman","19":"tag-marty-supreme","20":"tag-movie","21":"tag-new-york","22":"tag-opening-credit","23":"tag-part","24":"tag-people","25":"tag-ping-pong","26":"tag-safdie","27":"tag-scene","28":"tag-timothee-chalamet"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}