The poster for Marty Supreme.
Courtesy | Marty Supreme Instagram
Marty Mauser can’t stop moving. It’s what makes him such a fantastic table tennis player and a terrible father-to-be.
The fatherhood is alleged, at least in Marty’s eyes: The childhood friend he’s been having an affair with is pregnant, and she claims it’s his. But minutes after her pregnancy announcement, Mauser is off again, ping-ponging across the world.
“Marty Supreme” (2025) tells the fictionalized story of real-life table tennis star Marty Reisman. Set in 1950s New York City, the film follows Marty (Timothée Chalamet) as a young man struggling to make ends meet. He’s a “professional athlete,” as he proclaims to a businessman in a restaurant. He can’t help but betray how deeply he wants to be great — admits it openly, proudly, constantly.
The ruthless Mauser wants success on his own terms. That is his undoing.
Mauser comes from nothing. When he’s not hopping from international tournament to international tournament, Mauser lives in a tenement building in New York City. He doesn’t even have his own place, just a bedroom at his mother’s. Yet the 23-year-old constantly assures the people in his life — his dependent mother, concerned uncle, cabdriver friend, and the mother of his child — that he’s about to strike it big.
He’s not lying. Ping pong is an international phenomenon in Japan, where Mauser and his teammates play to sold-out audiences. There’s prize money. A lot of it. So much that Mauser refuses a managerial position at his uncle’s shoe store for this more intoxicating source of money. Mauser isn’t a shoe salesman, he tells his uncle. He’s a table tennis star.
But with a flick of the paddle, Mauser loses the tournament and the prize money. He bounces from cockiness to desperation, embarking on a series of quick-get-rich schemes that occupy the majority of the screentime. Sheer bravado wins him limited success, but Mauser’s clever schemes soon give way to grovelling and humiliation.
“Marty Supreme” isn’t really a film about ping pong, though Mauser’s ever-reversing fortunes mean his own life resembles the game. He never really improves at his sport: Mauser begins and ends the film equally excellent. There are no practice montages, no coaches, no motivational speeches. The real drama is interior, as the overgrown teenager is challenged to accept another’s terms.
“You sound like a child,” one of Mauser’s lovers tells him. She’s right. Mauser’s childish pride is awkward, relentless. To the point of ridiculousness, Mauser insists on doing things his way, alone and unhampered.
But Rachel (Odessa A’zion), the calculating mother of his child, presents Mauser with a conundrum. As much as he loathes the idea of settling down, Mauser is fond of her, and cannot meet her needs while maintaining his current lifestyle.
The magic of “Marty Supreme” happens when Marty turns out not to be “Supreme.” The final scenes of the movie — without spoiling anything — see him sitting still, absorbed in something other than himself.
The definition of success is the quest of every young man, particularly the restless ones like Mauser. Yet in its relentless pace and gruesome detail, the film makes too little room to develop the interior transformation it sets up. Mauser and Rachel, two characters with the real potential for a deep, life-altering relationship, emerge in the final scenes just as frustrating and shallow as they were in the first minutes. The film’s remarkable casting was wasted on a script that couldn’t do more than deliver high-speed visuals and audience terror.
Make no mistake: “Marty Supreme” is not for the faint of heart. It’s often grisly. It’s sometimes funny. And, in rare moments, it’s charming.
Chalamet earned a Golden Globe this week for his role in the film. To find out why — and to discover why you should never take a bath in a 1-star hotel — buy a ticket for “Marty Supreme.”
