Josh Safdie’s Ping-Pong Epic Swings for Greatness — and Connects

Writer Joseph J. Airdo // Phoenix Film Critics Society

There’s a moment early in “Marty Supreme” when its protagonist — a scrappy 23-year-old table tennis hustler played with feverish intensity by Timothée Chalamet — stands in his uncle’s cramped Lower East Side shoe store, watching the world pass by through grimy windows. It’s 1952, post-war America is booming, and Marty Mauser has decided his ticket out isn’t going to involve sensible wingtips or steady paychecks. It’s going to involve a ping-pong paddle.

This is the kind of audacious premise that could easily collapse into absurdity, but director Josh Safdie — working solo for the first time after his celebrated partnership with brother Benny — has crafted something far more compelling: a relentless, globe-spanning character study that uses America’s least respected sport as a lens to examine ambition, delusion and the peculiar faith required to chase dreams nobody else believes in.

“Marty Supreme” is inspired by the life of Marty Reisman, a real New York table tennis legend whose story Safdie discovered through his wife’s thrift store book find. But screenwriters Safdie and Ronald Bronstein aren’t interested in straightforward biography. Instead, they’ve built a fictional character who embodies a very American contradiction: the hustler-as-romantic, the liar-as-truth-seeker, the small-time operator with big-time dreams.

Chalamet’s Marty is an antagonistic protagonist in the truest sense. He lies to his pregnant girlfriend Rachel (Odessa A’zion, delivering a breakout performance). He steals. He abandons people mid-conversation when better opportunities arise. He’s petty, vain and utterly consumed by his singular obsession. Yet somehow, improbably, you find yourself rooting for him throughout all 150 minutes of this kinetic odyssey. That’s because Safdie and Chalamet understand something crucial about their character: Marty isn’t chasing fame or fortune — he’s chasing experience and accomplishment. His passion is genuine, even if his methods are questionable, and that authenticity makes his shortcuts feel not just excusable but somehow reasonable.

The film follows Marty from those cramped Manhattan streets to the grand stages of international competition—London’s Wembley Arena, the boulevards of Paris, Tokyo’s tournament halls, even the shadow of Egypt’s Great Pyramids. Cinematographer Darius Khondji, shooting on 35mm with vintage anamorphic lenses, creates a visual feast that’s both period-accurate and strangely timeless. The Lower East Side tenements feel lived-in and authentic, thanks to production designer Jack Fisk’s meticulous recreation (the legendary designer had never worked in New York before this). But it’s during the table tennis sequences that Khondji’s camera truly comes alive, capturing the balletic violence of professional ping-pong with multiple cameras positioned directly in the line of fire.

These match sequences are surprisingly exhilarating, building tension through rapid-fire editing and Daniel Lopatin’s anarchic score. Speaking of that score: “Marty Supreme” makes one of the boldest sonic choices in recent cinema, overlaying its 1950s period setting with pulsing 1980s new wave — Tears for Fears, New Order, Peter Gabriel, Alphaville. It shouldn’t work. A scene of post-war American life soundtracked by synth-heavy music that wouldn’t exist for another three decades should feel jarring, even disrespectful to the period. Instead, it creates a sonic landscape as chaotic and all-over-the-place as Marty’s life, as noisy and urgent as the New York City streets he navigates. For two and a half hours, you’re not just watching mid-century Manhattan — you’re dropped into it, sensory overload and all.

The supporting cast orbits around Chalamet’s magnetic performance with varying degrees of success. Gwyneth Paltrow, lured out of semi-retirement, plays Kay Stone, a former Hollywood starlet married to wealthy industrialist Milton Rockwell (“Shark Tank’s” Kevin O’Leary in a surprisingly ferocious film debut). Paltrow brings elegance to a character that feels unfortunately underwritten; Kay’s motivations remain frustratingly opaque throughout, making her relationship with Marty feel more like plot mechanics than genuine connection.

Far more successful is A’zion’s Rachel, a character who matches Marty’s chaos with her own brand of manic energy. She’s loud, manipulative and utterly unafraid — a perfect foil for Marty’s schemes. Together they’re a Lower East Side Bonnie and Clyde, and A’zion’s rapid-fire delivery and emotional volatility suggest a major talent to watch. Tyler Okonma (better known as Tyler, the Creator) makes his feature film debut as Wally, Marty’s cab-driving best friend and partner in crime, bringing an easy naturalism to the role.

But make no mistake: this is Chalamet’s show, and he delivers a performance that confirms his position among the most compelling actors of his generation. He makes Marty’s contradictions feel not just believable but inevitable — the sweet-talking charmer who abandons his girlfriend in a hospital, the devoted son who steals from his mother, the passionate artist who treats his art like a con game. It’s a high-wire act that requires the audience to stay invested in someone who, by most conventional measures, doesn’t deserve our sympathy.

Safdie’s direction is characteristically immersive and unsentimental. The film moves with what might be called relentless energy rather than frantic pacing — it’s constantly evolving, constantly progressing, but never feels rushed. This matches Marty’s own approach to life: single-minded, unstoppable, occasionally exhausting. At 150 minutes, the film never drags, moving from one memorable sequence to another. A anxiety-inducing home invasion to steal a dog. A confrontation with Japanese champion Koto Endo (played by real-life deaf table tennis champion Koto Kawaguchi). Multiple international tournaments that build to a grand finale that genuinely thrills.

What emerges is less a sports movie than a meditation on the American Dream’s stranger corners—the places where ambition curdles into delusion, where passion justifies betrayal, where chasing experiences and accomplishments matters more than maintaining dignity or character. It’s a strange moral lesson, but it’s an honest reflection of how ambition actually operates in the real world, stripped of the inspirational platitudes we usually attach to stories about dreamers and underdogs.

For Arizona audiences far from those teeming New York streets, “Marty Supreme” still resonates as a universal story about chasing unlikely dreams in the face of collective indifference. Whether it’s table tennis in 1950s Manhattan or pursuing artistic passions in the Southwest, the fundamental challenge remains the same: how much of yourself are you willing to sacrifice for something nobody else believes in?

“Marty Supreme” doesn’t provide easy answers, and it certainly doesn’t sentimentalize its protagonist’s journey. But it does something more valuable: it makes you understand, viscerally, what it feels like to be consumed by a passion that makes no practical sense. In Safdie’s hands, that understanding becomes its own kind of victory.

★★★★☆