Marty Supreme review: Timothée Chalamet hits new heights in breathless and brilliant ping pong drama

In February of this year, Timothée Chalamet raised eyebrows when accepting an award from the Hollywood elite. "I want to be one of the greats. I’m as inspired by Daniel Day-Lewis, Marlon Brando, and Viola Davis as I am by Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps," he said.

By his own admission, it was unusual to talk about acting with such competitive spirit, but his latest performance – as a 1950s professional table tennis player – thrillingly makes his rhetoric less surprising and his credentials even more legitimate.

It’s 1952 in New York and 23-year-old Marty Mauser is a shoe salesman with the gift of the gab. He fools around with his girlfriend Rachel (Odessa A'zion) in the storeroom and clashes with colleagues over his dream of becoming an international table tennis champion, which soon takes him to Wembley for the British Open.

It’s there that the story gathers pace and never lets up, not least as Marty meets three key new people to use or obsess over: Gwyneth Paltrow’s retired movie star, her millionaire husband (Kevin O’Leary) and Koto Endo, a Japanese table tennis star with a puzzling technique for gripping the bat.

This is no regular sports film, though. It’s as much about table tennis as Challengers was about the ATP Tour. For Marty, chasing the American Dream is sport in itself, and no one will get in his way – including the people he supposedly loves. The film is written and directed by Josh Safdie, one of the brothers behind 2019’s Uncut Gems with Adam Sandler, and is absolutely in the same high-octane vein.

Very loosely based on the life of ping pong hustler Marty Reisman, the story crashes between continents as Chalamet swaggers and sweats through all kinds of schemes involving the Harlem Globetrotters, a stolen dog and a blown-up petrol station.

“I have a purpose. It puts me at a huge life disadvantage,” Marty callously tells a pregnant Rachel. As table tennis rapidly grows on the world stage, he is both the USA’s biggest talent and an obnoxious showman: the ex-clerk who “could sell shoes to an amputee”, and the Jewish prodigy who calls himself “Hitler’s nightmare”.

If he sounds deplorable, it’s because he is. But like many great American character studies, you won’t look away and will laugh as much as you condemn. Chalamet’s performance is a feat of sheer intensity, but also echoes the screen presence of Tom Cruise’s arrogant pool player in The Color of Money, or even Robert De Niro’s fresh-faced hustler in Martin Scorsese’s earlier film, Mean Streets.

To play such a narcissist is a diversion for Chalamet in the wake of Wonka or Dune, as here the only one who would call Marty the chosen one is himself. But Chalamet’s confidence and physical comedy take his work up a gear.

Amid the exhilarating and intoxicating chaos, there are fine supporting turns too. Odessa A'zion does well to be the only firecracker who can get through to Marty as the relentless tail spin lands him in another fresh hell of his own making. While Gwyneth Paltrow returns on excellent form in a tough role as a washed-up actor of dubious ability.

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Alongside a number of non-professional actors, the casting also finds personality in unexpected places: musician Tyler, The Creator brings charisma as a fellow hustler, cult film director Abel Ferrara menaces as a man Marty shouldn’t mess with, and Kevin O’Leary — a businessman known as a judge on the Canadian Dragons’ Den — excels as CEO of an ink company.

It’s all part of the screwball and shaggy story. And just like One Battle After Another, this year’s other acclaimed state-of-the-nation American film, eccentric and absurdist touches help mask Marty Supreme’s slightly indulgent runtime.

With scenes of ping pong rallies backdropped by the stars and stripes of the American flag, it’s easy to think of Forrest Gump, cinema’s other champion with the bat. But that parallel only pulls into sharper focus the intelligence of this breathless and brilliant film: if Tom Hanks’s wholesome veteran was a product of 1990s optimism, Marty Mauser is a brash, corrupted descendant — and an All-American man for our times.

Marty Supreme is released in UK cinemas on 26th December 2025.

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