Marty Supreme: A Review (Review #2105)

MARTY SUPREME 

Ambition can be a catalyst for growth or a hindrance to maturity. Marty Supreme, while long, is a thrilling, fast-paced and wild film. With simply brilliant performances from its cast, Marty Supreme dominates the screen and charms the viewer.

New York City, 1952. Marty Mauser (Timothee Chalamet) has one goal, one vision, one dream. None of them involve working in his uncle's shoe store. They are to be the world table-tennis champion. The British Open is taking place in London, and Marty is dead set on getting there come hell or high water. He will do anything and everything to pursue his dream, even taking the money his uncle promised him by force.

In London, Marty is driven to defeat everyone and everything around him. That goal leads him to check out of the cheap lodgings the players get and into the Ritz. It involves sleeping with former movie star Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), who is married to pen magnet Milton Rockwell (Kevin O'Leary). It involves insulting Rockwell to his face. Marty is good but ultimately is defeated by Japanese player Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi). Marty is unaware that Endo is deaf, a result of the war, and thus cannot be distracted.

Back in NYC, Marty finds himself in a continuing series of strange circumstances, outlandish disasters and near-disasters. Most of the chaos within and without Marty's life are of Marty's own making. He tours the world as part of a halftime show for the Harlem Globetrotters. Marty is not thrilled about being essentially a performing monkey, but money is money. He firmly rejects a chance at a rematch with Endo if it means deliberately throwing games to him as part of Rockwell's promotional tour. 

Marty is desperate to get to Tokyo for that year's Table Tennis Open. However, everything from his affair with friend Rachel Mizler (Odessa A'Zion) to a gangster's dog continue to block his path to greatness. Hustling and getting hustled, Marty continues to fall and rise repeatedly. Eventually, perhaps inevitably, Marty makes it to Tokyo, even if he has to endure great humiliation to do so. 

Still, Marty's travails do not cease. Rockwell, who knows of his liaison with Kay, will not let Marty off the hook so easily. Marty may not be able to compete in the Open, but he still gets his rematch with Endo. Will Marty prove himself supreme? Will he also find that winning means something other than triumphing over all his foes?

Logic should tell us that Marty Mauser is a pretty reprehensive person. He's arrogant. He's manipulative. He's selfish and self-centered. Yet, he is despite all that, a positive figure. He has blinding ambition. He is driven. He is focused. He has his own sense of integrity. Perhaps, now in retrospect, I can look on Marty Mauser as a young and foolish man, who believes that the world is his for the taking to end up realizing it is what we give that matters. 

Many times, people use the term "career-making" or "career-defining" to describe a particular performance. Timothee Chalamet has had many such "career-making/defining" performances in his still young life (he turned 30 last month). Marty Supreme will have even the firmest, fiercest Chalamet haters concede that he is both one of the finest actors of his generation and even a star. He makes Marty into this nuclear explosion of a character. Marty is brash, quick-witted, charming, dangerous and surprisingly loveable. It is not often that someone can make a character rattle off an Auschwitz joke and still have you on his side.

Don't worry, Marty is Jewish.

In Chalamet's performance, we see Marty as not some cocky kid. We see, instead, a driven young man, aware of his talents and strength, who knows his worth. Dear me, he might be the kind of man that Ayn Rand adored: someone who put himself first because he knows his own worth, even if no one else does. Yet, I digress.

Timothee Chalamet gives such a driven, crazed, wild and ultimately moving performance that, regardless of recognition, I think it will stand among the greats. He dominates Marty Supreme with a ferociousness that leaves one almost breathless.

That is not to say that Marty Supreme is a one-man show. Everyone in the cast, even the smallest of roles, brims with energy. Kevin O'Leary is spot-on as Milton Rockwell, Marty's evil businessman patron and antagonist. I was unaware that he was known primarily as one of the hosts on Shark Tank (never having seen the show). He gives an excellent performance of arrogance and malevolence. I think many people are making far too much of one of his final lines, when he tells Marty that he was born in 1601 and was a vampire. 

I did not take Rockwell's comments literally. I think he was so enraged that he was being metaphorical. Still, it is a credit both to O'Leary's performance and director/cowriter Josh Safdie (writing with Ronald Bronstein) that Marty Supreme could make people think that it is flirting with the supernatural. 

Marty Supreme is filled with a cacophony of small roles that still leave an impact. Apart from Chalamet and O'Leary, the biggest role probably is that of Odessa A'zion as Rachel, the closest figure that Marty can have any genuine emotional sentiment for. She does excellent work as a woman who has genuine feelings for Marty but who can also be deceptive to get him. 

Gwyneth Paltrow makes Kay into a wise and aware woman, but one still driven by her own self-doubts. She runs through a whole set of emotions. She can acknowledge that she knows Marty's tricks. She can be appropriately dramatic when attempting a comeback with a vaguely A Streetcar Named Desire show. She can show the devastation at the reviews. Other figures who pop up sporadically make for fun viewing. Penn Gillette is almost unrecognizable as the dog-holding farmer. Emery Cohen, so wonderful in Brooklyn, is likewise almost unrecognizable as Rachel's cuckold husband. Fran Drescher tones down her still-recognizable accent as Marty's worried and frustrated mother. 

The movie has a wonderful score that fits the era. It does use 1980's music, but the anachronisms do not work against it. The final scene with Alphaville's Forever Young will be a very moving moment. It is completely inaccurate in terms of history. However, the song still fits the scene, coupled with Chalamet's performance.  

Marty Supreme is, like the main character, a fast-paced, driven film, taking you for a ride but making you love it.  

DECISION: A-