by Charles Kirkland, Jr.
In a quest to prove that he is the best table tennis player in the world, Marty Mauser leaves a wake of reckless destruction in Marty Supreme.
Marty Mauser knows, without a shred of doubt, that he is the greatest table tennis player in the world. Unfortunately for him, in postwar America of the 1950s, ping-pong is treated as a novelty rather than a legitimate sport. With little institutional respect or opportunity available, Marty is forced to hustle his way into competition, chasing validation in a country that barely acknowledges his talent. When a new challenger emerges, Marty’s already obsessive drive hardens into something darker. His singular mission to prove his supremacy comes at a cost, slowly turning him into the very worst version of himself.
Written by Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein and loosely inspired by the life of legendary table tennis champion and hustler Marty Reisman and his book The Money Player, Marty Supreme stars Timothée Chalamet alongside Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion, Tyler, the Creator, and an unexpected standout turn from Kevin O’Leary. The film is directed by Josh Safdie, marking his solo effort in a year where both Safdie brothers released separate, sports-centered projects.
Earlier this year, Benny Safdie directed The Smashing Machine, a deliberately off-kilter biopic of mixed martial arts champion Mark Kerr starring Dwayne Johnson. Where Benny’s film is brooding and inward, Josh Safdie’s response is frantic, kinetic, and relentlessly propulsive. Marty Supreme is a feverish character study, a movie less concerned with the mechanics of table tennis than with the corrosive psychology of a man who must win at all costs.
At the center of it all is Timothée Chalamet’s electric performance as Marty Mauser. Reisman was famously known as “The Money Player,” a gambler and hustler who thrived on psychological warfare as much as athletic skill. Mauser embodies those traits and amplifies them. He is brilliant, manipulative, and deeply unpleasant. Marty has little regard for the feelings, ambitions, or humanity of anyone around him, using friends, lovers, rivals, and benefactors alike as disposable tools in his relentless pursuit of dominance. The film never asks us to like him, only to watch, transfixed, as he burns through every relationship in his orbit.
Josh Safdie is firmly operating within his signature style here. His chaotic direction injects the film with breathless momentum, transforming small rooms and minor competitions into pressure cookers of tension. The camera rarely settles, the pacing never relents, and the energy perfectly complements Chalamet’s ferocious performance. Together, director and star push Marty Supreme squarely into awards-season conversation.
Special praise is also due to Kevin O’Leary, who delivers a surprisingly effective performance as ink pen magnate Milton Rockwell. Best known as himself on Shark Tank, O’Leary proves to be a natural presence onscreen. Rockwell initially seems like the one person Marty cannot manipulate. He is wealthy, savvy, and unimpressed. Watching Marty methodically work his angle on Milton becomes one of the film’s most compelling subplots.
Rated R for pervasive language, sexual content, brief violent imagery, and nudity, Marty Supreme is not without flaws. Its most notable shortcoming is that Marty largely gets what he wants without facing meaningful consequences. Viewers hoping for a traditional moral reckoning or fairy-tale ending will not find it here. Still, that discomfort feels intentional. This is not a redemption story. It is a character portrait, warts and all.
In the end, Marty Supreme falls just shy of outright brilliance, but it remains a wildly entertaining, high-energy film that far exceeds any expectations one might reasonably have for a movie about ping-pong. It is audacious, abrasive, and unforgettable, proof that even the smallest sport can produce a titan-sized story when placed in the right hands.
Marty Supreme is in theaters starting December 25, 2025.
Grade: B+
