If anybody were to ask who one of the biggest, most recognizable young stars of the 21st century is, some people might throw in Timothée Chalamet’s name. His works span from his first role in Interstellar and his breakthrough features, “Lady Bird,” “Call Me by Your Name,” and “Little Women,” to his most recent works like “The French Dispatch,” “Dune” parts one & two, and “A Complete Unknown.” All of this has led to one of the best performances of 2025 as Marty Mauser in ‘Marty Supreme’.
Josh Safdie’s first solo directorial effort after working with his brother, Benny, on ‘Good Time’ and ‘Uncut Gems’, presents a thrilling story. ‘Marty Supreme’ follows professional table tennis player, Marty Mauser, who clashes with people around him, trying to raise money to compete in the Table Tennis world championships after losing his last big gig.
For months now, Timothée Chalamet has seemingly been in character promoting this movie, and it appears this will have some success. Marty Mauser is the definition of egotistical. From the very start of the movie, we are shown that Marty will do whatever he wants, including having an affair with the married Rachel Mizler (Odessa A’zion), leading to a pregnancy. He constantly gloats about his success and attempts to control how people act around him. He boots himself up, but we come to learn that he is as good as he says he is.
Timothée Chalamet is supreme in this movie. Marty is a difficult character to make likable as he treats everybody around him, even those who love him, such as his partners and Gweneth Paltrow’s Kay Stone, as people he needs to manipulate. Despite this, Chalamet adds an undeniable charm to his character, adding his many quirks to his movements and proving that he is endlessly watchable.
Marty is incredibly passionate, and when things don’t go his way, he will trick and plead to achieve his goal. What stops him is how everything seems to be going wrong all at once. In a typical Safdie fashion, everything that can go wrong will go wrong, and the strong motivation for Marty’s character won’t ever stop him.
The Safdies are known for utilizing cinematography and sound design to create heart-attack-inducing levels of anxiety, and Marty Supreme lives up to this idea. From the first scene, the blaring music and soundscape are chaotic and greatly establish the kind of movie the audience is about to sit through.
The first 30 minutes are loud and eventful, but the stakes are just building. We see Safdie and co-screenwriter Ronald Bronstein placing the Jenga block, and we know they are about to fall. Once the stakes of the film take hold of Marty, the movie begins to move at an exceptional pace, with Chalamet never losing the power needed to carry the film.
The characters Marty collides with are all fairly memorable and contribute heavily to the adrenaline. Some of these include A’zion’s Rachel, an innocent girl who occasionally lets her wild side out; Paltrow’s Kay, a stuttered actress whom Marty takes advantage of to raise money; Kevin O’Leary’s Milton Rockwell, a a slimy businessman and Kay’s husband; cult director Abel Ferrara’s Erza Mishkin, a menacing criminal; and Tyler the Creator’s hilarious Wally. Each of these characters is incredibly memorable and plays off Chalamet incredibly.
The settings in this movie are dynamic and varied, creating a large scale that adds to the wild stress. There are many ways that Safdie foregrounds this feeling of stress. More often than not, the characters are talking over each other, and naturally, they get louder. The sometimes triumphant and sometimes Tangerine Dreams-esque melancholic score colliding with the extreme close-ups on people’s faces makes the audience feel they are in the room with these characters, making everything feel so much tighter, like we are sardines squished together.
Safdie’s pacing allows for slower moments in between the chaos while still making its 150-minute runtime fly by. Without this lead performance and people at the helm, this movie could have felt half-baked as we followed an unwatchable character, but Chalamet rises above this. His presence makes an already interesting character study much more appealing. He’s charming, hilarious, and enthusiastic about what he loves.
Everybody wants to do something in their lives that is great. We may not entirely agree with Marty Mauser, but his constant striving for what he wants is oddly sympathetic despite how twisted some of his actions are. All that mixed with great direction, pacing, and supporting cast, ‘Marty Supreme’ shows that it has the power to entertain and induce a possible heart attack.
‘Marty Supreme’ is currently available in theaters and for rent on streaming platforms like Prime Video and YouTube.
