If you were as much of a fan of Josh Safdie’s darkly comedic thriller Uncut Gems as I was, I’m happy to report that his newest film Marty Supreme is equally as fun for similar reasons. Like Adam Sandler’s underhanded and desperate jeweler, the title character is another man fixated on a single objective and they’ll do anything to achieve their goal, even while they’re fully aware their life is going completely to hell.
But as the old saying goes, the root of the best comedy is suffering. Leading man Timothee Chalamet shows his usual wide range here, able to balance an unstable energy with a sharp charisma and sense of guile.
Bored with his life as a shoe salesman, Marty Mauser swipes 700 bucks from his uncle’s safe in order to fund his trip to England to compete in a table tennis competition he’s something of a prodigy- with the help of his friend Dion (Luke Manley) he even has his own customized orange ping-pong balls- and he sure as hell isn’t going to let you forget it. Marty is temperamental, smart mouthed, absurdly impulsive, and unsympathetic to proper social conduct, and he sees all of this as a decided advantage. He doesn’t have time for you 1950s-era normies, he’s a man on a quest.
His misadventures actually have a lot of variety to him, including his fling with the local pet store owner Rachel (Odessa A’zion, who may rival Chalamet for having the best performance in the entire movie), his other affair with a glamorous movie star played by Gwyneth Paltrow (who he’s also willing to steal from, by the way), running from angry mobs with his taxi driver friend and fellow table tennis player Wally (Tyler Okonma), having complete meltdowns after losing to his hearing-impaired rival Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), and attempting to get to Japan for a rematch, even if it means working with literal gangsters (Abel Ferrera).
Two of Josh Safdie’s films working with his brother, the aforementioned Uncut Gems and Good Time, revolved around protagonists going through a complete crash out in the midst of trying to achieve their goals. This is his first film as a solo writer/director, and it still shows some of those same narrative tendencies, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Like Adam Sandler’s loser jeweler Howard Ratner and Connie the bank robber played by Robert Pattinson, Timothee turns in a strong performance as a complete failure who still keeps at it- in spite of all the problems they cause themselves.
But the supporting cast easily adds a lot to it, especially A’zion as someone who genuinely cares about Marty despite also being understandably fed up with him. I would certainly like to see Tyler the creator do more acting because even though in this movie he’s partially playing himself a bit, he has enough screen, presence and personality to where I’d love to see him in different roles.
The main appeal of Marty Supreme is that Mr. Mauser is basically an agent of chaos- but even though he’s massively flawed and self-centered, unlike the Joker he still has enough charm to keep the audience invested as he gravitates from one misadventure to the next. But one factor as to why everything flows so smoothly is that Marty can’t avoid karma- his immaturity and inexperience gets him hustled fairly often, and his poor decisions frequently come back to pop him from behind (without giving anything away, this is both figurative and literal) You might ask yourself, how are they able to get such an entertaining tale out of someone so unlikable? It’s basically schadenfreude.
Because while Marty does have some wit and charm about him, he doesn’t know how to utilize it to properly function in society so he’s a character you’re meant to laugh *at*, as opposed to alongside. He insists that he’s a young man seeking purpose, and the movie does agree with him, just not in how he expected. can easily recommend Marty Supreme as another fun dark comedic adventure from Safdie and A24, one that- while this song is not used in the film- feels, to me, like the cinematic equivalent of the Rolling Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want.
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