A buoyant and unpredictable film about wanting, above all else, to be the best at something.
I went into Marty Supreme assuming I was about to watch a straightforward, inspirational true story about a legendary ping-pong player. Which immediately raised a question: why had I never heard of this person?
That confusion never really goes away—and that’s the point. Whose story is this, exactly? And when is it being told? The film feels as if it has been assembled inside Marty’s own head, cut together from half-remembered movies, cultural artifacts, and emotional highlights. It’s as though Marty walked out of a theater in 1989 after seeing Look Who’s Talking, thought about his own life, and then edited the memories together with needle drops from Peter Gabriel, Alphaville, and Tears for Fears. The soundtrack is wall-to-wall ’80s pop for no obvious reason. That’s before you even get to the score by Oneohtrix Point Never, one of the most exhilarating film scores in years—so good that Pitchfork highlighted it in its Best New Music section.
Marty Mauser has one supreme goal: to prove he is the best at something. Unfortunately, he is only exceptionally good at two things—selling shoes and ping-pong. No one wins trophies or headlines for selling shoes, so ping-pong it is. He robs his own family’s cash register to fund a trip to an international tournament, because that’s what belief looks like when it borders on delusion.
The year is 1952, and the film mostly couldn’t care less about anything else happening in the world. Marty is Jewish, carrying the psychic weight of World War II while refusing to be seen as a victim. He disarms people by insulting Jews in public, then reassuring friends in private: “It’s fine—I’m Jewish.” It’s ugly, funny, defensive, and very human.
Marty Supreme is buoyant and exciting. Marty is an archetype—the Rocky Balboa fantasy most of us secretly entertain. We may never be Michael Jordan or Babe Ruth, but maybe, if we really applied ourselves, we could become the world’s greatest pickleball champion. The movie understands that hunger perfectly.
This is one of the most exhilarating collections of well-written scenes I’ve seen in years. Timothée Chalamet produced the film, the first from the Safdie brothers since Uncut Gems—to the eternal disappointment of Adam Sandler’s Netflix fans. Compare it to something broadly beloved like Forrest Gump and you can feel how unsure audiences might be. Is it a tragedy? A comic romp? A true story? It’s all of those things, but never long enough to be comfortable.
Like Marty himself, the film wants to prove it is extraordinary, hilarious, and capable of shocking you at any moment. It brushes up against crime-movie territory—poverty, desperation, proximity to ruin—without ever collapsing into cliché. It’s a genuine delight.
I want to be like Marty one day.
9.5/10
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