Josh Safdie’s “Marty Supreme” was released in theaters on Dec. 25. Starring Timothee Chalamet, Odessa A’zion and Gwyneth Paltrow, the film runs for nearly two and a half hours and takes the viewers through a whirlwind of a story that is anything but what anyone expected.

For context, this story is loosely inspired by the true story of American table tennis champion Marty Riesman. Reisman started his career through hustling games in New York and eventually became popular in the 1950’s. He was known for being incredibly talented in table tennis and having an overwhelmingly competitive attitude towards the game. These qualities are present in Chalamet’s character, Marty Mouser, but are very over exaggerated and at times unpleasant to witness. Coming from someone who’s followed Chalamet’s career since 2019, this is without a doubt his best performance to date. I genuinely hated Marty Mouser! He was cocky, arrogant, pompous and extremely dislikeable. This project ultimately stands as a testament to how strong of an actor Chalamet is. 

Visually, this film takes the cake. Every single aspect in terms of production was so well executed and adds so much value to the project. One of the things that stood out to me the most was the casting. Back when the cast first got announced I remember thinking something along the lines of, “this is really strange but I’m gonna trust the process” and I’m glad I did. Kevin O’leary specifically gave me a genuine laugh because I couldn’t believe he was a part of the cast. And I mean he turned out to be a memorable part of the film so I’m not complaining. Odessa A’zion gave a phenomenal performance as her character. She plays Rachel Mizler, Marty’s…partner in crime to most parts of the story? It’s hard to nail down her exact description but regardless, she absolutely delivered. My introduction to A’zion was through Rachel Sennott’s “I Love LA,” which is one of my current favorite TV shows. I wasn’t sure what I expected from her going into “Marty Supreme” but she hit it out of the park. The way she played Rachel was just so brilliant and made me want to empathize with her at all times. 

However, there were some weak moments about this film that are hard to ignore. One of these is the runtime. I’m not complaining because it was nearly two and a half hours, I don’t mind a longer runtime. I’m complaining because the reason it was as long as it was is due to the addition of lots of unnecessary scenes and storylines that, in my opinion, don’t add much value to the story other than shock. Like the whole dog storyline? What was that? It was one of the memorable moments that I took away from watching, but that is literally because I only remember thinking, “what is going on and why are we doing this?” And yes, art is subjective and I just might not have understood the value it adds to the story, but I was so lost. One second Marty was taking some old guy’s dog to the doctor for money and the next him, Wally (played by Tyler, The Creator) and the dog were getting chased down the street causing them to lose the dog. And about 45 minutes later, Marty and Rachel end up getting into a literal fight for their lives with some guy who was holding the dog hostage. Overall very confusing.

Another issue I had with this film was the mention of the orange ping pong ball being marketed everywhere for weeks upon release, and when it came time to watch the film, it was only mentioned twice! Twice! I waited for Marty to get to the final match in Japan and whip out his signature orange ping pong ball and he never did. I genuinely can’t remember him even playing a round of table tennis with it. It’s like we got Timothee Chalamet on top of The Sphere (which was supposed to look like the signature orange ping pong ball) and got him to do all this promotion about the orange ping pong ball for what? Just so it could be mentioned in one or two scenes? I was a little let down. I’d probably understand the reasoning behind it better if I had a marketing degree, but I don’t. Oh well!

Overall though, I thought that “Marty Supreme” was brilliant. It will be on many film bro’s top four favorites on Letterboxd and I think that really says something. This movie definitely was not for me, but I still enjoyed it regardless. It made me leave the theater totally set on the idea that this was going to be the project that finally got Chalamet a well deserved Oscar.