Marty Supreme (2025); a movie that is less than the sum of its parts

 

Have you seen Uncut Gems (2019)? Yes?

Then you’ve seen Marty Supreme (2025).

Both movies are beautiful, manic journeys with an overconfident gambler desperate to make this one last chance work. If you haven’t seen Uncut Gems, I won’t spoil the ending, but Marty Supreme does end on a different note.

(That being said, expect some light spoilers through the rest of the review.)

Marty Supreme is the baby of Josh Safdie, one half of the brother duo who created Uncut Gems, and it is painfully evident. While the substance of the stories may be different, Marty Supreme’s story beats are an almost perfect match. The third act of both movies even kicks off with a theater scene.

Please, please don’t waste my time

The movie dragged. I felt the entire runtime, and I could perfectly pinpoint which side journeys I’d cut. 

There has to be an easier way to get a person shot, and there was a whole story line with a dog that really only served to show Marty as the kind of person who won’t go out of their way to be cruel to an animal, but he isn’t going to rush it to the vet when it is bleeding if there is money to make.

For a movie with such a frenetic energy, we sure didn’t get anywhere fast. Maybe this was the goal, the hamster wheel of it all, Marty trying, trying, trying to get his big break. But the entire middle portion of the movie, well over an hour of our run time, isn’t about Marty’s dream at all, instead it’s a shorter feature I’d call ‘Marty Escapes New York!'. 

I’m sure other viewers have their own plotlines and stories they’d like to see cut. (And isn’t that telling.) I would not be surprised if some of my favorite scenes are included in these suggested cuts. Loosing my favorite scenes would probably be worth it, if it meant bringing this film down to a tight 90 minutes.

What are we trying to say here?

There is a mysticism that at times comes through the story. This was true of Uncut Gems as well, but it is more blatant in Marty Supreme, actual scenes instead of small pieces of dialogue. Foreground instead of background. Most, though not all of these scenes are related to Marty’s Judaism and his Jewish heritage.

I found a story about a friend’s time in Auschwitz, and how they provided for their bunk mates particularly compelling, but then the message of this story seemed to be abandoned very quickly. Marty brings back a piece of an Egyptian pyramid for his mother, telling her “we built that”, but what is Marty building?

And (spoilers ahead in the next few paragraphs, if you want to avoid them, jump to the next subhead) at the end evil Kevin O’Leary, who is of course just Kevin O’Leary, tries to force Marty, a Jewish man, to shame himself then kiss a pig.

Marty continually succeeds when you want him to fail, and fails when you want him to succeed, until the very end where he throws away his new-found humility and defeats his superior Japanese opponent in an exposition match, which he then picks up again to wish his opponent luck, and he gets himself back to New York for the birth of the child he’s been denying is his for the whole movie.

I honestly really wanted him to be stuck in Japan rebuilding his life in a foreign country. But of course that didn’t happen, that would have made sense with the previous narrative beats of the story.

Characters welcomed

The movie is obviously supposed to be more of a character study than a traditional story, with a straight forward plot. I love a good character study film. And Marty isn’t the only batshit character for us to study. 

His childhood friend/girlfriend, his mother, his uncle, the former movie star/other girlfriend, the rich asshole he’s trying to mooch off, they’re all clamoring for something from Marty, and he refuses them all for as long as he can.

Marty is charismatic, egotistical and driven. He is a selfish, manipulative person, raised by selfish, manipulative people in a community, or communities, that prioritize taking care of one another. Timothee Chalamet does a fantastic job bringing this asshole to life. 

I’ve seen some complaints about overacting, but that is so clearly who Marty Mauser is. He is constantly performing, not just for those around him but also for himself. There are little moments where Marty's performance breaks, and in almost every instance where this happens, we get a close-up of Chalamet’s face as he processes what has happened, how he’s failed.

This is where Chalamet shines, but the movie itself becomes route with the same kind of shot over and over again. Each of the actors put in a strong or, in the case of Gweneth Paltrow and Odessa A’zion, phenomenal performance. Even Tyler Okonma, better known as Tyler the Creator, puts in a solid performance.

And once again Kevin O’Leary portrays himself, a racist rich dude who is pretty clueless but has enough money to get what he wants.

Now, what about the table tennis

The table tennis was fucking beautiful.

In my shorter cut of Marty Supreme, not a single second of the table tennis is removed. Hey, maybe we even put in more!

I was surprised just how much I liked the actual table tennis scenes themselves. They were beautifully choreographed and the way they were shot was dynamic and engaging. Honestly, much more creativity was put into filming these scenes than into showing Marty’s emotional journey.

While I wasn’t expecting to love these scenes this much, I knew, very generally, what was coming when Koto Edo played in the British Open with a sponge racket, holding it in that weird “pen” grip that is now ubiquitous in the world of professional table tennis. Marty, of course, does not handle this well. And this racket haunts the rest of the movie.

Marty has not yet arrived at the top of the world of table tennis, and he is already behind the times.

His own offered innovation to the sport, neon orange balls, are similar to Marty; interesting and flashy, perhaps even worthwhile, but little more than a gimmick compared to what others have to offer.

In conclusion, I guess

I don’t regret watching Marty Supreme, but it was not worth the theater experience. Even the amazing table tennis scenes couldn’t completely save the movie for me. While the movie wasn’t bad, and I do still think Chalamet was fantastic, I would be surprised if it was up for Best Picture.