Cici Zhu
By the time “Marty Supreme” ended, we weren’t sure if we’d watched a movie about ping-pong or just been stuck in a very long rally ourselves, ball bouncing nowhere in particular. We wanted to love it, thanks to the great acting, interesting cameos (Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion, Tyler the Creator, Abel Ferrara) and the kind of lively energy that hints at director Josh Safdie’s upcoming excellence. Despite its remarkable reviews, this movie misses the mark for us.
“Marty Supreme” was released on Thursday, Dec. 25, 2025, and, by mid-January 2026, exceeded $80 million domestically and over $100 million globally at the Box Office. The movie had a reported budget of around $60-70 million, received a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet) and Best Director at the Oscars.
The obvious: Timothée Chalamet gives one of his most committed performances. On paper, Marty Mauser, a shoe salesman turned obsessive ping-pong hustler in 1950s New York, is exactly the sort of chaotic, driven, slippery antihero Safdie is great at capturing. The performance alternates between charming, abrasive and self-destructive, and you find yourself rooting for Marty even as you grimace at everything he does.
The hustle culture of the “New York grind” is clearly a theme Safdie leans into, but “Uncut Gems,” Safdie’s most prominent piece thus far, uses that anxious momentum to portray the character’s downward spiral. Here, it’s almost like we’re looking for an actual narrative thread to pull. We’re dragged into so many sub-stories that by the time the movie clocks in at roughly two-and-a-half hours, we are bogged down in a series of micro-stories with no satisfying connectivity. There are whirlwind sequences that don’t build into anything cohesive, and characters are introduced and then dropped without emotional weight.
For example, a random dog Mauser encounters serves no purpose beyond brief emotional beats that are never built on, despite the dog’s considerable screen time. The subplot doesn’t influence Marty’s decisions, affect the outcome of the film, or return in a meaningful way, making it feel like filler rather than a symbol or parallel to the main narrative. Paltrow’s character, Kay Stone, is fleeting even though audience members may expect her role to be more substantial. The videographic editing and ping-ponging (pun unavoidable) between threads rarely feels purposeful. It follows the movie’s plot: there’s a kind of frantic charm to it, but it starts to feel like chaos for chaos’s sake.
Viewer discretion is advised because there is explicit language, sexual content and mature themes such as addiction, misogyny and racist remarks. While these elements are used to critically examine the darker sides of New York hustle culture and 1950’s emphasis of masculinity, they are presented without sufficient narrative framing or consequence in several scenes, including the beginning credit scene.
Although the movie is broadly marketed as a sports drama, “Marty Supreme” explores larger themes, such as moral decay, obsession and the illusion of control. However, the film’s unwillingness to clearly situate these themes within a coherent arc makes them feel provocative rather than purposeful.