Marty Supreme gives A24 another ‘game winning’ film

★★★★★

By Iain McLean

A24’s latest release ‘Marty Supreme’ proves once again that the mantra of “A24 never misses” is still indeed the case.

Their most recent release is a dramatic tale of chasing dreams and reminding the audience what’s truly important. It’s also a loose biopic about real American table tennis champion Marty Reisman.

The film opens with the most interesting title card choice I’ve seen in recent memory, a conception scene set to 80s classic “Forever Young” by Alphaville.

The movie, set in the 1950s revolves around a young Marty Mauser, played by Timothée Chalamet, a shoe salesman with big dreams.

This unexpectedly big dream is to be a household name in table tennis. So much so that he’s willing to sacrifice anything to get it.

The character’s main conflict is redemption and revenge, at almost any cost, against Koto Endo, a Japanese player with a play style Mauser had never seen before which leads to him losing at the world championships.

Chalamet truly shines in this role, possibly more than any other so far, as it’s a deep raw dive into chasing dreams without facing consequences.

One of the people who gets dragged into Mauser’s dream chasing is his love interest, Rachel Mizler, played by Odessa A’Zion. A current rising star in her own right, she gets left behind when Mauser chases title wins, desperate for the winning pot.

This leads Mauser on a trip of a lifetime where he manipulates a near retired movie star Kay Stone, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, just to get to her rich husband, Milton Rockwell. The main goal here is to win him over so he can fund his ‘redemption’ trip to Tokyo so he can get revenge against Endo.

Although Marty does get a meeting with Mr Rockwell, his demands are not what Marty was hoping for. The caveat he is offered for a fully funded trip to Tokyo is to put on a fake exhibition match against Endo and lose, just so Rockwell can get more publicity overseas for his pen company.

Mauser, obviously, cannot let his confidence take a hit like that, especially in Koto’s home country. So, he denies Rockwell and turns to more unscrupulous methods to get to Tokyo, which repeatedly puts himself, his friends and Rachel, who is heavily pregnant with Mauser’s child, in extreme danger.

After all these methods fail he goes back to Rockwell and begs him to let him back into the original Tokyo plans, which after Rockwell embarrasses Marty at a house party, he agrees.

This leads to the climactic face off, but there’s another hitch the night before he’s due to leave; one of the people he tried to steal money from is a gangster who takes Rachel hostage who gets shot during a shootout and is left in hospital.

Marty chooses Tokyo over staying by Rachel’s side to make sure she and his child are okay. He follows Rockwell’s instructions at first until after facing yet another defeat at the hands of Endo, fake or not, decides to beg his rival into playing a real game.

This is when we’re treated to frankly, the most dramatic and nail-biting table tennis game I’ve ever seen.

Even though Marty doesn’t get granted access to the Tokyo World Championship, when he returns home he realises that everything he’s been chasing, everything he’s put himself and others in danger for in chasing his table tennis goals were not worth it.

The catalyst for this realisation?

By the time he returns to Rachel’s side in the hospital, she’s already given birth to their son, who Marty sees for the first time and breaks down.

This is when the film hits us with Tears for Fears’ smash hit “Everybody wants to rule the world” as the film ends with Marty still crying looking into his baby’s eyes for the first time.

Overall, this is probably one of A24’s crown jewels. The soundtrack enhanced every scene, the actors put on, arguably, their best performances and it deserves, in my opinion, award recognition.

A movie about a table tennis player shouldn’t be as fun or as touching as ‘Marty Supreme’ but somehow, they pull it off, with the audience fully hooked within the first 15 minutes.

Josh Safdie, the film’s director, along with Ronald Bronstein, the film’s writer, and Daniel Lopatin, the film’s composer truly came together and delivered an instant game winning smash with this film.

So much so, it now sits comfortably, for the foreseeable future, in my top films of 2026 and will need a very, very impressive release to take its throne in my book.

So, grab your paddles, buckle in for one of those movies that can alter your perspective on life and head to your local cinema, as a movie this good deserves the right atmosphere on first watch.