‘Marty Supreme’ is more of a drama than a sports movie

If you go into Marty Supreme expecting a sports movie, you might leave with mixed feelings. Josh Safdie’s latest film is more of a drama than a sports flick because there isn’t enough sports. That’s more of an observation than a complaint.

As a drama, Marty Supreme is solid. As a sports flick, it leaves you wanting more. However, Safdie deserves credit for avoiding clichés. There are abrupt, surprising twists. The story doesn’t feel like anything we’ve seen before. This is by design, as Marty Supreme is angling for major award nominations this winter. Unlike his brother Benny Safdie’s sports film, The Smashing Machine, Marty Supreme is a box-office hit.

Marty Supreme is loosely based on the 1950s ping-pong champion Marty Reisman. Timothée Chalamet stars as Marty Mauser, who aspires to be the best of the best. Safdie skips the usual setup and prologue that you would typically see in a sports movie. There are no scenes of Marty as a child discovering table tennis and slowly realizing that he has a gift. Marty Supreme starts with Mauser as an adult, working as a shoe salesman to support his true passion.

A single characteristic defines Chalamet’s Marty, and it’s not that he’s an ultra-competitive heroic figure. He’s a cad, exhibiting loutish behavior that makes it difficult for anyone on-screen or in the audience to root for him. That’s perfectly fine. Characters don’t need to be likable, but they must be interesting. Mauser is certainly not dull.

What is missing from Marty Supreme is the details behind the sport he loves. There are no discussions of strategy or breakdowns of what makes table tennis different from any other competitive endeavor. As a result, this movie could have substituted ping pong for another individual sport, and there would be absolutely no difference.

Marty Supreme could have easily been about pole vaulting, pool, or golf. The sport is immaterial to the narrative, serving only as a plot device to move the story along. But since it is about ping pong, it would have been nice if Safdie had taken us deeper into that world, beyond the hustling and the dark rooms where the stars compete.

In Challengers, you learn a lot about the people and places of tennis. Aside from Mauser, Marty Supreme lacks that. Even his rival, Koto Endo, played by real-life champion Koto Kawaguchi, doesn’t have clearly defined characteristics.

That’s an odd choice, especially since the competition scenes are well done. Chalamet clearly put in the work to look like an elite ping-pong player, at least from a layperson’s perspective.
For all of its sports deficiencies, Marty Supreme relies more on drama. Away from table tennis, the story centers on the women in Mauser’s life: Kay (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Rachel (Odessa A’zion). He’s having affairs with both married women. His relationship with Kay is the most interesting, and Paltrow’s performance is terrific. In limited screen time, she’s so memorable as an older actress trying to stay relevant.

Many people will like Marty Supreme. Some will love it. And then others will wish they had learned more about the sport at the center of the story.