Marty Supreme

As Hollywood spews out more biopics than ever before, we are offered yet another biopic by the name of Marty Mauser, a professional table tennis player, who as a professional, his life was and those around him were incredibly emotionally and mentally messed up, assuming this script has validity. But even if these people were problematic, the directing and acting was first rate.

Timothee Chalamet stars as Marty Mauser, a fictionalized version of real-life 1950s table tennis hustler Marty Reisman. This sports drama follows Mauser's chaotic pursuit of table tennis stardom in 1950s New York, hustling games to fund his dream while navigating a world that doesn't take the sport seriously. The film is known for its kinetic, high-energy style, similar to the director, Josh Safdie's other works

Others to round out the cast are Gwyneth Paltrow as Kay Stone, Odessa A'zion as Rachel Mizler, Kevin O'Leary as Milton Rockwell, Larry 'Ratso' Sloman as Murray Norkin, Tyler Okonma as Wally, Luke Manley as Dion Galanis, Fran Drescher as Rebecca Mauser, Emory Cohen as Ira Mizler and Koto Kawaguchi as Koto Endo.

This was brilliantly directed with grit and dramatic flair by Josh Safdie ("The Pleasure of Being Robbed" '08, "Daddy Longlegs" '09, "Buttons" '11, "Lenny Cooke" '13, "Heaven Knows What" '14, "Good Time" '17, "Uncut Gems" '19) plus TV, shorts and music videos. Even though Chalamet is an incredible talented actor, it still takes an amazing and calculating director to pull off this kind of performance. The audience was back and forth on whether they were for Marty or totally against him since he was so manipulative. And the way that Marty finally became desperate due to his own devises, and still people really didn't want to trust him because of his past--this is golden Safdie. It was effectively written by Josh Safdie ("The Pleasure of Being Robbed" '08, "Daddy Longlegs" '09, "Heaven Knows What" '14, "Good Time" '17, "Uncut Gems" '19) plus shorts and a music video, and Ronald Bronstein ("Frownland" '07, "Daddy Longlegs" '09, "Heaven Knows What" '14, "Good Time" '17, "Uncut Gems" '19) plus a short and music videos. While the direction was delineated with amazing clarity, the writing had a tendency to meander and became a bit choppy in certain areas. The sequencing also was a bit off, but after a while, the film started to come together and then the story was much more captivating. Even though this is a fictionalized version of what actually happened, assuming these characters were depicted accurately, it was incredibly difficult to have pity on most of the characters in this. 

If you're an aficionado of biopics, you'll like this, even though there were liberties taken. What made up for the choppy writing was the acting by Chalamet, the direction by Safdie and the cinematography by Darius Khondji afc/asc, which all will undoubtedly be nominated come Oscar time. 

Out of 4 Stars: 2.5                                        Rated: R                                            150mins.