Dive into Josh Safdie's 'Marty Supreme,' starring Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser, a relentless New York striver in 1952 who aims to conquer the world of table tennis. This review explores Chalamet's 'never-better' performance and the film's gritty ambition, drawing parallels to 'Uncut Gems'.
“Everybody wants to rule the world,” goes the Tears for Fears song we hear at a key point in “Marty Supreme,” Josh Safdie’s nerve-busting adrenaline jolt of a movie starring a never-better Timothée Chalamet. But here’s the thing: everybody may want to rule the world, but not everybody truly believes they CAN. This, one could argue, is what separates the true strivers from the rest of us. And Marty — played by Chalamet in a delicious synergy of actor, role and whatever fairy dust makes a performance feel both preordained and magically fresh — is a striver. With every fiber of his restless, wiry body. They should add him to the dictionary definition. Needless to say, Marty is a New Yorker. Also needless to say, Chalamet is a New Yorker. And so is Safdie, a writer-director Chalamet has called “the street poet of New York.” So, where else could this story be set? It’s 1952, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Marty Mauser is a salesman in his uncle’s shoe store, escaping to the storeroom for a hot tryst with his (married) girlfriend. Suddenly we’re seeing footage of sperm traveling — talk about strivers! — up to an egg. Which morphs, of course, into a pingpong ball. RELATED STORIES Timothée Chalamet wants to be great. ‘Marty Supreme’ might get him there 6 MIN READ Full list of 2026 Golden Globe nominees 4 MIN READ ‘One Battle After Another’ leads Golden Globe nominations, while ‘Wicked, For Good’ falters 5 MIN READ This witty opening sequence won’t be the only thing recalling “Uncut Gems,” co-directed by Safdie with his brother Benny before the two split for solo projects. That film, which feels much like the precursor to “Marty Supreme,” began as a trip through the shiny innards of a rare opal, only to wind up inside Adam Sandler’s colon, mid-colonoscopy. Sandler’s Howard Ratner was a New York striver, too, but sadder, and more troubled. Marty is young, determined, brash — with an eye always to the future. He’s a great salesman: “I could sell shoes to an amputee,” he boasts, crassly. But what he’s plotting to unveil to the world has nothing to do with shoes. It’s about table tennis. This image released by A24 shows Timothée Chalamet in a scene from “Marty Supreme.” (A24 via AP) How likely is it that this Jewish kid from the Lower East Side can become the very face of a sport in America, soon to be “staring at you from the cover of a Wheaties box?” To Marty, perfectly likely. Still, he knows nobody in the U.S. cares about table tennis. He’s so determined to prove everyone wrong, starting at the British Open in London, that when there’s a snag obtaining cash for his trip, he brandishes a gun at a colleague to get it. Shaking off that sorta-armed robbery thing, Marty arrives in London, where he fast-talks his way into a suite at the Ritz. Here, he spies fellow guest Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow, in a wise, stylish return to the screen), a former movie star married to an insufferable tycoon (“Shark Tank” personality Kevin O’Leary, one of many nonactors here.)
