Marty Supreme: The Cost of Winning

Like a neon orange ping-pong ball ricocheting across the table into your face, with Marty Supreme (2025), Josh Safdie has served a magnetic and eye-catching movie just in time for the 2026 awards season. Starring Timotheé Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Odessa A’Zion, Marty Supreme follows Marty Mauser (Timotheé Chalamet), an impulsive yet talented table tennis player determined to win the world championship at whatever cost. The movie is the true, albeit highly fictionalized, story of real-life ping-pong champion Marty Reisman, whose name was changed to avoid people thinking the movie was completely accurate. 

Marty Supreme is set in the 1950s within the immigrant Jewish community on the Lower East Side. Safdie doesn’t let the viewer forget Marty’s Jewish roots, integrating them into many scenes, especially early on. This highlights Marty’s outsider status, creating a narrative of him as an underdog in the film. 

Chalamet gives a frenetic and electric performance in Marty Supreme, drawing the audience to an otherwise unlikeable and problematic character. Chalamet successfully conveys Mauser’s stubbornness and arrogance, but also manages to give him a compelling motivation, portraying him as a man desperate to create a legacy. His performance emphasizes how Mauser’s most prized possession is his dignity. Chalamet embodies Mauser’s anger about his loss against Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), an anger that stems not from the actual defeat but from how the public loss stripped his sense of self-worth. Chalamet then combines that with Mauser’s fear of being forgotten, showing that he is willing to agree to being humiliated and mocked in order to achieve his goals—but always on his terms. Mauser is alienated in most social settings, lacking both the empathy needed to fit in with his tight-knit community and the necessary polish to mingle with social elites. 

Gwyneth Paltrow also delivers a stunning performance as Kay Stone, a wealthy yet forgotten actress who longs to return to the stage. She begins a sexual relationship with Mauser, using his interest in her to fuel her dreams of being desired by the men around her and the audiences she performs for. Paltrow has already proven her talent several times in her career, but cements her star power and scene presence even further in Marty Supreme. The pure joy that washes over Stone’s face when she hears the cheers of the audience while on stage unveils layers of her character that are unfortunately never fully explored.

Odessa A’Zion, however, is a breakout star from Marty Supreme, having previously been largely unknown. Her character, Rachel Mizler, is a headstrong woman having an affair with Mauser; she is also in a struggling marriage with Ira Mizler (Emory Cohen). A’Zion conveys a sense of desperation and hardscrabble reality, which counters Mauser’s “not even the sky is the limit” mentality. 

The direction is extremely well-executed. The competition scenes are especially messy, fast, and often overwhelming, but still fluid and easy to follow because of the addition of shots of the spectators' reactions. These shots also emphasize how Mauser is constantly paying attention to the audience, even in moments of victory, allowing the viewer to feel Mauser’s desperation for glory. The different angles and fluctuating lighting work together to create a sense of desperation in every scene, with rapid cuts highlighting the high stakes of each match. The quieter scenes are also composed to create a sense of isolation for Mauser, whether it appears in a zoomed-in shot of his face on a plane full of American soldiers or in an empty corner in a crowded bowling alley. The color scale consists mostly of muted, dull colors with an occasional pop of color. The contrast of red table-tennis rackets against the greys and blues of the audience highlights the way Mauser seems like a standout star amongst his community of struggling Jewish immigrants. Additionally, the score is well-matched to every scene, such as the electric music complementing the matches and the softer music that plays when he is with Rachel to represent his softer side with her. The score also uses synth-y 80s tracks, which contrasts with the 1950s setting to further paint Marty Mauser as a man out of place in his world. 

Marty Supreme has a waterlogged runtime of two and a half hours, stuffed with a mixture of relevant and superfluous storylines. Each subplot is executed magnificently, but they don’t flesh out the characters, which seems like the result of a lack of editing in the writers’ room. Marty Mauser spends a great deal of time trying to convince the people around him that he will achieve greatness and riches beyond their wildest dreams through ping-pong if they would just invest a little more time, a little more money, and give him a little more leeway. In some ways, the experience of watching Marty Supreme is like that as well—like Josh Safdie grabbing the audience by the shoulders and coaxing them to spend just a little more time on this somewhat bloated film, insisting that the payout will be worth it. Is it worth sitting through the two-and-a-half-hour runtime? Yes. But that runtime could have and should have been reduced, and the plot should have been made tighter by cutting several subplots.

Overall, Marty Supreme is a success, with many standout elements that range from the soundtrack to the acting, and even, at times, the script. The plot, while sometimes held back by storylines that don’t add much to the film or its characters, is energetic and compelling throughout. The world is chaotic, messy, and colorful, but still grounded by Chalamet’s charged energy and Paltrow's constant performance.