Not enough bounce in Safdie’s ping-pong picture
Featuring one of Timothée Chalamet’s best performances, Josh Safdie’s “Marty Supreme” slyly disguises his criticisms of America in the form of a self-important 1950s table-tennis star who doesn’t care who he steps on in pursuit of his own perceived greatness. But does it work? In many ways, yes. But in critiquing the world champion of bluster, Safdie commits many of the same “Hey, look at me,” missteps as his antihero.
Working for the first time without his brother, Benny, at his side, Josh Safdie has no one around to rein in his tendency toward grandiosity. Subtly is not thy name. But pomposity is. And it is personified by Chalamet’s Marty Mauser, a world championship-caliber ping-pong hustler who doesn’t give a damn about how many bridges he burns so long as he gets his way. He’s very much a 23-year-old infant who’s replaced his rattle with a paddle.
Oh, the fantastic things he does with it, mostly swatting away all overtures of love and support from his mother, Rebecca (Fran Dresher); uncle, Murray (Larry “Ratso” Sloman); childhood sweetheart, Rachel (Odessa A’zion), and best buddy, Wally (rapper Tyler the Creator, aka Tyler Okonma). It’s a safe bet he will wrong each of them before satisfying his one true desire, which is a rematch against the reigning world table-tennis champ, Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi).
That Chalamet can render this louse charming is the eighth wonder of the world. But charm he does, from behind Tojo glasses that give him the appearance of a predatory insect eager to feed on his next victim. And there’s no shortage of them, ranging from Gwyneth Paltrow’s faded movie star, Kay Stone, and her pen-magnate husband, Milton Rockwell (“Shark Tank’s” Kevin O’Leary), to a small-time gangster in Abel Ferrara’s Ezra Mishkin, a man with a dog and a severe bone to pick with Marty. And did I mention Rachel is pregnant with Marty’s kid, even though she’s still married to the abusive Ira (Emory Cohen)?
Wow! That’s a lot for one movie! And, unfortunately, it shows in a discombobulated script by Safdie and his longtime collaborator Ronald Bornstein that’s literally all over the map, from the Bronx to Jersey to London to Tokyo. Safdie seems incapable of maintaining focus on any single goal or idea. It’s very much a one with the ol’ make-it-up-as-we-go-along style of filmmaking. When taken as individual set pieces, these various vignettes – Marty crashing through the ceiling in a bathtub, getting shot at by a crazed farmer (Penn Jillette), wooing Kay with unabashed bravado – are hugely entertaining. But as a whole, none of it connects satisfactorily.
Worse, the ultimate payoff is a profoundly disappointing bit of uplift that not only arrives out of left field but also goes against everything a Safdie picture represents. It’s not unlike the empty feeling you’re left with at the conclusion of his brother Benny’s recent “The Smashing Machine,” a similar tale of an obscure, troubled sports figure more popular in Japan than at home. Let’s pray both Safdies have gotten the urge to work alone out of their systems. But if forced to choose, I lean toward what Benny did with “Smashing Machine.” At least it made sense.
Logic is out the window with “Marty Supreme,” unless you search among the cracks to locate the aforementioned satirization of the good ol’ USA. Much like our reckless politicians – on both sides – and fuck-you diplomacy, Marty (very loosely based on the real-life Marty Reisman) barges through one bad decision after another before blaming his failure on those foolish enough to abet his zany schemes. Like a certain president, the loyalty is decidedly one-sided, until it isn’t. But even when viewed from that perspective, “Marty Supreme” isn’t saying anything new or revelatory.
It also lacks the subversive fun of the Safdie brothers’ two greatest triumphs, “Good Time” and “Uncut Gems.” I LOVED those two profiles of losers fumbling to be winners. Their ineptitude was sort of the point. But with Marty, he’s already a champion. Maybe not in the USA, where table tennis has yet to catch on, but in Europe and Japan, he’s the bee’s knees. For him, there’s no place to go but down. What fun is that?
It’s almost as perplexing as Safdie’s decision to fill the soundtrack with hits from the 1980s in a film set in the early 1950s. A brave choice, except the intended purpose is obscure, assuming there was one to begin with. It certainly ups his film’s appeal. I’d rather hear
Alphaville’s “Forever Young” over the opening credits than something as rote as “Rock Around the Clock.” But like just about everything in “Marty Supreme,” it lacks purpose and meaning. Simply put, there’s no return on its serve.
Movie review
Marty Supreme
Rated: R for nudity, language throughout, bloody images, sexual content, some violent content
Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion, Kevin O’Leary, Tyler, the Creator, Abel Ferrara, Fran Dresher, Penn Jillette and Sandra Bernhard
Director: Josh Safdie
Writer: Josh Safdie and Ronald Bornstein
Runtime: 150 minutes
Where: In theaters Dec. 25
Grade: B-
