“Everything in my life is falling apart, but I’m gonna figure it out.”

–Marty Supreme

This review contains spoilers for “Marty Supreme.”

Writers from Mencken to Tolkien have extolled the beauty of the phrase “cellar door;” even divorced from context, giants of Western literature claim it to be one of the most pleasing series of sounds produced by the human tongue.

Personally, I would beg to differ, offering instead: “Ping-pong drama loosely based on the life of a 1950s hustler played by Timothee Chalamet, co-starring the mean bald dude from Shark Tank and Tyler the Creator, directed by the guy who did half of Uncut Gems and all of the best Adam Sandler stand-up special, and scored by Oneohtrix Point Never, and in the process of marketing the film, the lead stood on top of the Vegas Sphere after dropping a guest verse on a Liverpool cloud rapper’s underground hit.”

It’s a little longer, but it beats “cellar door” for hype factor.

Marty Supreme is Josh Safdie’s second solo project, in a creative split from his younger brother Benny, known for his directorial work on Uncut Gems, Good Time, The Smashing Machine, and in acting roles (notably, as Edward Teller in 2023’s Oppenheimer).

The elder Safdie was inspired by “legendary ‘eccentric Jewish immigrant Lower East Side characters’ who’d play [table tennis] at his grandparents’ kitchen table after Shabbat dinner.” Also serving as inspiration was the life of semi-notorious ping-pong prodigy Marty Reisman, whose colorful past allowed Safdie a jumping-off point for the story of Marty Mauser, Chalamet’s Lower East Side Jewish fast-talking 1950s table tennis scammer.

Supreme follows Mauser from his job at a neighborhood shoe store to the British Open, where his magnetic personality and showmanship gain him notoriety and a certain amount of fame, as well as attention from an ink magnate (played by Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary) and his wife, an aging starlet (played by Gwyneth Paltrow). Mauser’s braggadocio and genuine skill with a ping-pong paddle take him around the world with the Harlem Globetrotters as a novelty act, starring opposite a Holocaust survivor and former table tennis champion, whose tale of defusing bombs at Auschwitz amps up the uncomfortable tension in the movie by several notches.

Back in New York, Mauser (or Supreme, by this point) is defusing his own bombs – a secret girlfriend who may or may not be bearing his child (played with real pathos and a certain amount of sleaze by Odessa A’Zion), a hypochondriac mother and an uncle who Supreme may or may not have robbed to get to London for the British Open, and the victims of several other of Supreme’s cons, including a New York gangster deprived of his dog, a taxi driver/table tennis scammer, and the jilted husband of A’Zion’s character. In Safdie fashion, it is chaotic, everyone is talking over each other, and the whole movie feels like a panic attack. It is totally fantastic.

Without Chalamet, of course, there is no Marty Supreme – I mean, the movie obviously doesn’t exist, but the character itself does not exist, because there is no one else that could have played the role with the same frantic, sweaty, but somehow still extremely likable joie de vivre that animated every aspect of Chalamet’s performance. Much like Robert Pattinson’s Constantine Nikas from Good Time or Adam Sandler’s Howard Ratner from Uncut Gems, each Safdie protagonist would lack something vital if played by anyone else; here, Chalamet gives Marty a certain spark that makes you want to root for him, whether he’s smacking balls across the table at the British Open or hustling a group of teens at a bowling alley. He is intensely ambitious, profoundly annoying at times, and insanely egotistical. He is the American dream.

Chalamet doesn’t do it alone, of course. Safdie has assembled an impressive cast of actors and non-actors alike to flesh out his version of 1950s New York. O’Leary essentially plays himself as ink magnate Milton Rockwell, and Paltrow’s performance as Kay Stone is endearingly sad and hilarious at turns, as she and Marty use each other for each other’s own ends. Tyler Okonma (better known by anyone under 30 as foulmouthed rapper and Adult Swim comedian Tyler, the Creator) plays Marty’s friend and partner in crime Wally, who is, in turn, used and abused by Supreme in the process of making a quick buck.

And there are fairly quick, blink-and-miss parts by celebrities that had me palming my phone in the theater frantically Googling “Penn Jillette marty supreme where??” Abel Ferrara plays a frighteningly convincing New York thug, an almost-unrecognizable Penn Jillette plays a Deliverance-style hick, Emory Cohen rocks a wifebeater, Luke Manley portrays the most accurate 30-year-old failson I’ve ever seen outside of a mirror – and there are more and more bit parts that will have you glued to the Marty Supreme IMDB page for hours going “Oh, that guy?” It’s delightful.

Driving the film forward is Daniel Lopatin (better known by some as electronic musician Oneohtrix Point Never, and better known by others as the guy that dated Adam Friedland’s ex, you know, the Red Scare girl who was briefly in Succession) who crafted a throbbing, Tangerine-Dream-esque score that intensifies the urgency already omnipresent throughout the entire movie. Lopatin, who had previously collaborated with Safdie on several other projects, described the intentional anachronism of the film’s score (which, despite being set in the 1950s, features artists like Tears for Fears and Peter Gabriel) as indicative of Marty looking back at his life, “reflecting on how he arrived at that point … and that’s what you’ve been watching on screen.”

It’s difficult to know exactly how to classify the film – it is by no means a straight up sports drama, as the marketing for it might have led audiences to believe. It’s certainly not a biopic, given its loose grasp on the actual reality of the real Marty Supreme’s life.

It doesn’t fit neatly into any particular mold, and just when you think you have it figured out (sports movie, crime caper, relationship drama) it turns a quick 180 and throws something new at the audience. Marty rockets around the world, from the Lower East Side to London to Japan, and pulls con after con in quick succession, hoping each one will undo the negative effects of the last one – but he’s a dog chasing his own tail, a rat on a treadmill.

You want to scream at him, as you do at every Safdie protagonist (or the lead in a horror movie), to make just one good decision – but at the end of the day, you still feel deeply for Marty, and want him to succeed. And in the end, in a way, he sort of does.

Marty Supreme may be the best film of 2025, in a year with some stiff competition. Chalamet may be ambivalent about his chances for an Oscar, but the movie is certainly in the running. It digs into the heart of post-war America, and unearths uncomfortable truths about ourselves and the drive to succeed that animates everyone. Marty is not an aspirational figure by any means, but it is easy to picture him fitting into that swath of characters from foundational “young male” cinema that appear and reappear in hype edits set to Linkin Park songs and slowed down MGMT remixes – Patrick Bateman, Ryan Gosling’s unnamed protagonist from Drive, Travis Bickle, Rorschach.

Watching him play ball and hustle marks, you can’t help but remark – “He really is Marty Supreme.”

Jacob Hersh was born and raised in Anchorage. He is currently studying law at the University of Idaho. He occasionally does movie reviews and writes weird columns for the Landmine to get extra money for beer.