Marty Supreme (2025)

Score: 1 / 5

Remember back in 2016, when Vance's Hillbilly Elegy was released to much fervor and placed on lots of reading lists? It seemed to answer some deeply uncomfortable questions about how and why that presidential election resulted as it did. People craved to understand aspects of rust belt America and tried to make sense of it on a national scale. Taking as its focus desperate people -- desperate for substances, for purpose, for escape -- the story of material rot was then used by its writer to make broad claims about the state of the country and its moral decay. 

The Safdies have done similar things with their films, especially Uncut Gems and now Marty Supreme, the latter a solo directorial effort by Josh Safdie. Taking as its focus a distinctly abhorrent character, these films cycle through a miniscule odyssey of sorts, showing how desperation for personal aggrandizement leads these toxic, wicked men into terrible circumstance after miserable choice. We're watching them digging their own graves in propulsive, vicious thrillers so rooted in what appears to be reality that we barely have time to appreciate the consequences of their actions before they're spinning it into a story of perseverance, even redemption. They're snake oil salesmen, attempting to fool the characters around them and even us; the problem is that many audiences -- hell, even the Safdies themselves -- seem to cash in on their depravity.

To position myself clearly: I don't. I find these films repugnant, unentertaining, disturbingly stupid, and frustratingly inert. Worse, the experience of watching them is akin, to me, to watching "reality" television or hot topic talk radio: the sheer cacophony of noise blasting from the speakers, paired with grimy, bleak, dark visuals that are usually unfocused and shaky, is like the sensation of my nails scraping a blackboard. The shiver going up my spine and causing my teeth to grate isn't that of frisson, but rather that of chomping down on a piece of foil right on a filling. It's painful. Those of you who have been with me a while will recognize my hatred for this style of filmmaking as similar to what Sean Baker does (Anora, for example), but at least Baker can stage a scene with a bit more theatricality and dramaturgical intent.

Without flogging the dead horse that is this movie (and my opinion of it), I'll prolong my torment in discussing it to say the few notes I jotted after screening it. Feeling like his attempt at a seedy '70s criminal antihero, Timothee Chalamet stars as the title character in what I can only describe as his attempt at de Niro's Taxi Driver, Eastwood's Dirty Harry, or Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon. A sleazy, sweaty, angry white man who lies and cheats his way into his own version of success: money, sex, and the keen ability to avoid the worst consequences of his actions. Indeed, he seems determined to convince himself that he's invincible and, moreover, a gift to the world around him. Deluded and grotesque, Chalamet delivers a compelling and admittedly excellent performance, even though I will never understand the sexual nature of his stardom among certain viewers. I find him [insert antonym for attractive] at best, yet here he is repeatedly boinking Gwyneth fucking Paltrow for no clear dramatic reason as if he's the stud of the century. Much like the main plot, this highlights that Marty is so convinced he himself is a god that he can't see himself in reality.

Apparently set in the '50s, the film is already displaced temporally in my mind, yet the overbearing soundtrack includes several '80s songs that, while sometimes vaguely funny, serve more to confuse me than inform the mood. Perhaps this is intentional, showing that Marty is, too, out of time and dreaming of other temporal successes that he dreams of. But there are far more literate ways of doing this; look at Edgar Wright's films or, hell, Baz Luhrmann's. And, keep in mind, all this is a backdrop to what the film quickly establishes as its focus: ping pong. Yep, you got it. This crime saga writ laughably small is, in effect, a sports drama about table tennis. Sure, Marty has a few scenes in the store where he sells shoes absentmindedly, eager for the next opportunity to impregnate Rachel (Odessa A'zion), an old friend married to a brute (Emory Cohen) who is a cheap ripoff of Stanley Kowalski.

Marty sweet talks everyone and everything to the point that you can't trust even his breathing; he blames any slight or inconvenience on everyone and everything around him, all while swindling his way into better lodgings at the Ritz or out of paying for destroying a bathtub, a floor, and the man below whose arm is nearly ripped in half as a result of his own negligence and dangerous disregard for ample warnings. Thus begins a further complication of his criminality, one that takes over the second half of the film in increasingly stupid ways, not least featuring a climactic shootout at a farmhouse over a dog.

A bizarre cast rounds out the whole experience, including Sandra Bernhard, Fran Drescher, and even Tyler the Creator (who we know is horny for twinkish Chalamet in their uncomfortable scenes together), but collectively they have very little to do. Even Paltrow, who performs with her usual excellence, can't win us over to her character, who has transcendent moments she immediately undermines with gobsmackingly stupid choices, usually resulting in her going back to Marty for sex. That's because Safdie is too interested in the toxic braggadocio of their protagonist and how it relates to a different kind of snake oil salesman currently running the American government (and, apparently the Venezuelan government now). It's a dismal depiction of American identity and masculinity, and thankfully Safdie does include some lighthearted commentary on this from an international perspective when Marty travels with the Harlem Globetrotters and eventually competes in Tokyo. It's just not enough. It's not even enough, in one scene, when the businessman Marty wants to bankroll him subjects him to public humiliation via paddling, which is probably supposed to be funny but sat in our auditorium with a ringing silence of deep discomfort. Perhaps it's because we know Marty deserves it and much worse. But he doesn't get worse. The film ends with him proving himself and finally seeming to choose family life, easily the most unforgivable part of the whole nonsensical escapade.