MARTY SUPREME directed by Josh Safdie (USA, 2025)
Marty Supreme represents everything that is wrong with America right now. He is a trickster, a liar, an immoral fraud and a sore loser.
Does he remind you of anyone?
When he is comprehensibly defeated by a deaf Japanese table tennis champion Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi) he throws a tantrum and demands a rematch implying that he was cheated out of victory. It’s hard not to think of Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election result at this point.
How are we supposed to respond to a character who is so self-centred, selfish and manipulative? Are we meant to admire his attempted power grabs and his single-minded pursuit of wealth and fame?
If this film had been pitched to expose the consequences of narcissistic behaviour it would have been most welcome. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case. Instead, director Josh Safdie’s aim seems to be to get maximum entertainment value from a young man who will stop at nothing to achieve his goals.
Marty Mauser is a grifter and a con-artist. This, together with the sporting theme, invites comparisons to The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961) which starred Paul Newman as small-time pool player “Fast Eddie” Felson which carried the tagline: “It delves without compromise into the hungers that lie deep within us all”.
The key difference between these two films is that the soul destroying consequences of naked ambition are patently evident in Rossen’s film yet practically non-existent in Safdie’s noisy mess of a movie. It should also be said that Paul Newman is infinitely more believable as the flawed wannabe champion than Timothée Chalamet who looks and acts like a precocious schoolboy.
Any nods towards our anti-hero’s self-awareness and vulnerability are confined to the mawkish ending in which we are asked to believe in the possibility that becoming a father has a redemptive effect on Marty. Previous to this, he has been at pains to deny that this child is his and clearly has sympathy but no great affection towards the mother. The fake conclusion is in keeping with the phony values imbedded in this sorry tale.
This is America.
