Timothée Chalamet wants it, and he wants it bad. After booking roles early and often since a Law & Order guest spot in 2009, the actor’s big break arrived in 2017 with the twin releases of Lady Bird and Call Me By Your Name, and he hasn’t looked back since. In fact, his eyes have been fixated on the cinematic skyline; the list of name brand directors that the now-30-year-old has already worked with is parodically long (Christopher Nolan, Greta Gerwig, Luca Guadagnino, Wes Anderson, Jason Reitman, Adam McKay, and Denis Villeneuve, just to name a few), and somehow matched in its loftiness by snagging parts as Paul Atreides, Willy Wonka, and Bob Dylan. That last performance won him top honors at last year’s Screen Actor’s Guild Awards, and while Chalamet ultimately fell short of Oscar glory, his acceptance speech for that lesser prize is still reverberating. “I’m really in pursuit of greatness,” he said from the Shrine Auditorium stage in Los Angeles last February, “I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats… I’m as inspired by Daniel Day-Lewis, Marlon Brando, and Viola Davis as I am by Michael Jordan and Michael Phelps, and I want to be up there.” 

Subtle it was not, but that naked ambition, while risky from a likability standpoint, is singular among today’s ascendant performers, who mostly prefer a more disaffected veneer. Timmy knows what he’s after, which makes him something like a Safdie brother’s protagonist in the flesh. The duo behind deranged man-on-a-mission epics Good Time and Uncut Gems have parted ways since the latter film’s 2019 release, with Benny releasing early MMA chronicle The Smashing Machine this past fall, and Josh rolling out Marty Supreme on Christmas day. Having your accomplishments so thoroughly attached to another person would make any artist eager to prove their bonafides, marking Josh as an ideal shepherd for Chalamet’s rabidly enterprising attitude, and they’ve found their perfect conduit in Mr. Supreme.

That’s Marty Mauser (Chalamet) if you’re sticking to the birth certificate, though the New York City shoe store clerk would surely prefer that you speak of him with the reverence implied by the movie’s title. After all, the 1950’s Lower East Side resident only has the gig as a means to an end, funding his dream of becoming the greatest table tennis star the world’s ever known. It’s a divine calling, as he’s fond of telling everyone from his secret paramour Rachel (Odessa A’zion) to his cab driving best friend Wally (Tyler Okonma, aka Tyler, the Creator), requiring both steadfast conviction and a willingness to play fast and loose with the well-being of others. A shark in all but corporeal form, Mauser keeps it moving across continents and lines of basic civility, burning every bridge as soon as he’s done crossing.

There’s your baseline premise, but divulging anything more about events within Marty Supreme risks undercutting the jubilant excess on hand. Rather than adhering to anything resembling a three act structure, Safdie’s screenplay, co-written by Ronald Bronstein, moves like a stream of consciousness, wherein each sequence is the immediate result of its predecessor. Fans of Time and Gems will recognize the affectation, as will those movies’ detractors, for whom Marty will prove equally insufferable. All three flicks put boots on the ground and don’t stop sprinting until the closing credits, and while Marty and his unfortunate associates face all manner of danger and distress, we’re never made to wallow. Most of Supreme’s mania-inducing comparison points present their patented chaos as a rabbit hole for falling down; here, it’s more like a rocket ship, blasting off, and gaining velocity in the air.

Making an audience feel like they’re levitating out of their seat is no easy task, a mission that Safdie, unlike Mauser, knows better than to embark on alone. He’s surrounded himself with the best in the business, and while one wonders how, exactly, the auteur convinced A24 to spend so lavishly on his freewheeling ping pong epic, the results are right there on screen. Production designer Jack Fisk whips up a wholly believable post-war big apple, his grimy store fronts and back alleyways vividly captured by cinematographer Darius Khondji’s roving camera. The lens has to keep moving, because Safdie and Bronstein edit as though wielding a katana sword, their sharpened aggression matched by Daniel Lopatin’s hair-raising electronic score. His notes are buttressed by a few 80’s New Wave needle drops that are heavy enough on the nose to give you a deviated septum, but again, Marty isn’t in the business of being abstruse.     

Neither is Chalamet, who treats the whole affair as a grand statement of domineering intent. Being bulldozed by a performance is rarely this pleasurable, but the metatextual thrill of watching such an ardent and desirous actor find a character of equal hunger is exhilarating. He’s goddamned starving, motor-mouthing his way through nearly every exchange, oozing more charisma and animal magnetism than his rail-thin body can logically produce, and pouring sweat with a paddle in hand. Exactly how many body doubles were needed to accomplish the rousing sports set pieces is anyone’s guess, but our reflexive buy-in is telling. The ferocity of his confidence is contagious, and while you’d be hard-pressed to describe Mauser as a good person, the relentless self-advocacy is galvanizing. It’s hard to think of a recent film that charted pure want with such electricity, a feat born of its star’s ravenous yearning for legendary status.

With such a greedy centrifugal force on hand, Supreme’s supporting cast is largely forced to subsist off of scraps, a compromise that’s chiefly embodied by A’zion, though the screen presence is powerful enough to distract from just how little she has to do. Same goes for Gwyneth Paltrow as retired movie star Kay Stone; the Academy Award winner’s innate grace still moves the needle, but the character only exists to move the plot along, and underline Mauser’s drive to climb further up the socioeconomic ladder. Waiting for him there is Kevin O’Leary, and before getting hung up on the Shark Tank star’s questionable political stances, it’s worth marveling at what Safdie has wrung out of an untrained thespian. Playing Kay’s monied, merciless husband, the occasional Mr. Wonderful is a formidable foe, as allergic to Marty’s whirling dervish as the women in his life are charmed, a small man made tall by capitalist gains. He’s a shockingly talented performer, but no amount of actorly chops can stave off the corporate stench.

He’s far from alone in the stunt casting department, but where the proclivity for name brand faces often distracts from films that are more indebted to their plot, the call sheet here just ups the ante on all the abounding tumult. Look past O’Leary and Okonma, and you’ll find former SAG president Fran Drescher, iconic B-movie director Abel Ferrara, famed playwright David Mamet, highwire daredevil Philippe Petit, and NBA Hall of Famer George Gervin. There’s a lot more where that came from, fusing together in a galaxy-brained stew with a parade of zoological contributors. Movies have been around for a while, so there’s probably another one that includes both a walrus and an armadillo, but it likely wasn’t a kaleidoscopic period piece about a conniving table tennis player. We’re in rare air in as far as ecstatic disarray is concerned, the inspired clutter priming us to fall headlong into the sequences of racquet-based competition.

Khondji frames them with ample verve, and Chalamet’s physicality gives each event a tensed-up sense of importance, but their efficacy owes more to traditional sports movie structures than anything else. The stakes are familiarly high, the obstacles knowably insurmountable, and the desperation in Marty’s eyes neatly maps on to the subgenre’s long-winded history of underdogs on the cusp of life-changing victory… but most of those films just aren’t that good. All the cliches that lead up to the final showdown tend to keep a true rooting interest at bay, but after bearing witness to the unpredictable slings and arrows that Mauser faces on his way to a climactic rally in Tokyo, you’re firmly in his corner. He may be a gobsmacking narcissist, but he’s given it all he has, and that hour glass is running out of sand.

Time is always a preoccupation of Safdie’s work, but that ticking clock usually points to a grisly outcome. Here, it’s more like a countdown until the next chapter in a person’s life, a notion that’s italicised by the film’s closing image, but there’s another shot, just moments before, that’s already cinched the point. As his movie pulls into the station, Marty finally sits down, signaling a willingness to slow his roll after 150 straight minutes of dead-sprint. A softer, more traditional reading would cite his abrupt stillness as a symbol of lessons learned, but the juicier interpretation is that Mauser absolutely went for it, and has earned his rest. Youth is a precious commodity, and wasting it on making all the right choices is a greater crime than leaving some carnage in your wake. Chalamet, Safdie, and Marty Supreme writ large aren’t afraid of a little wreckage, and their incandescent extremism resulted in a flick that’s here to stay. Go out there and swing big, kids; you’ll have the whole rest of your life to apologize. Today is for glory.