Marty Supreme movie review: Timothee Chalamet smashes it in Josh Safdie’s film

Through him, Safdie, with his frequent collaborator and co-screenwriter Ronald Bronstein (though minus his brother, Benny Safdie), tells a tale of 1952 New York, where many walls stand between its upper echelons and a Jewish boy from the Lower East Side hoping to cross over, like Marty Mauser. If Marty is staking it all, begging, borrowing, stealing, taking risks, and humiliating himself in public, to achieve his “destiny”, the film leaves you asking if there is any other way.

Of course, Marty can survive, as his mother, an uncle who is financing them, and the other members of the close-knit Jewish community are doing – in small businesses and odd jobs. But as Marty tells his childhood friend and off-and-on lover Rachel (A’zion), who is among the ones he treats badly: “I have a purpose. If you think that it’s some kind of blessing, it’s not. It means I have an obligation to see a very specific thing through.” In contrast, he tells an eight-month-pregnant Rachel, who has just finished telling him the baby is his: “I don’t even know whether you have a purpose.”

At another time, Marty shocks a group of journalists before the British Open Championship by saying about a fellow table tennis player and Auschwitz survivor, Kletzki (Röhrig): “I will do to him what Hitler could not.” Relax, Marty adds, he can say this as he is also a Jew.

That sharpness is far from flippant. When a rich businessman called Rockwell (played by The Shark Tank’s suitably sharky O’Leary), who can make or break Marty’s career, condescendingly tells Kletzki that his son died saving Jews like him in the war, Marty pointedly asks, “Weren’t it the Russians who liberated Auschwitz?” Rockwell has to concede that his son died “somewhere” in the war.

Paltrow plays Rockwell’s former movie star wife Kay, with the easy, intelligent sexiness that has settled around the actor now. Kay is the only one who sees Marty through and through for who he is, but allows herself to be wooed by him; does not mind a few romps in the hay, but with her own interests firmly in sight.

There are a couple of other interesting people who drop in for roles which are not much but make an impact (including the rapper Tyler the Creator and the writer Pico Iyer). As Marty’s great Japanese rival, real table tennis star Koto Kawaguchi steps in, providing a dignified but fierce contrast to the American’s brashness. It’s disappointing though that the film suggests it is a walk in the park for Marty to come and defeat the reigning world champion without any real practice or actual passion for the game.

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Within this madness of Marty, some scenes stand out for their sheer audaciousness. One of those involves a dog, a seedy motel, a crashing bathtub, and a petrol pump escape. The dog keeps coming back in surprising ways.

As does Chalamet. If all sport is war minus the shooting, this guy is fully loaded. The Academy better heed.

Marty Supreme movie director: Josh Safdie
Marty Supreme movie cast: Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion, Tyler the Creator, Géza Röhrig, Koto Kawaguchi, Pico Iyer, Kevin O’Leary
Marty Supreme movie: 4.5 stars