Marty Supreme (2025) Reviews: What Critics Said

Editorial note: This is a roundup of published criticism of Marty Supreme. Celluloid has not screened the film for this piece, and it carries no Celluloid rating. The critics are named and linked under Sources.

Is Marty Supreme worth watching?

Most critics say yes: Josh Safdie’s table-tennis hustler film was widely praised as a propulsive, abrasive and hugely entertaining character study, with Timothée Chalamet at his most commanding. Reviewers admired its energy, its grimy 1950s New York and its refusal to make Marty likeable. The reservations concern thin supporting roles, a loose sense of what it all adds up to and, for one critic, a hollow moral outlook.

What is Marty Supreme about?

Marty Mauser, a young man with a dream no one respects, goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness, which in his case means becoming a champion table-tennis player in 1950s New York. Josh Safdie directed and co-wrote the film with Ronald Bronstein. It was released in 2025 and runs 150 minutes. Timothée Chalamet plays Marty, with Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion, Kevin O’Leary, Tyler, The Creator, Fran Drescher, Abel Ferrara and Géza Röhrig in support. Release details and where to watch are on the Marty Supreme film page.

What critics praised

Jamie Graham of Empire called it a great American picture, dazzling from its spotlit table-tennis matches to its dark view of the American dream. He thought Chalamet the standout, larger than life while keeping everything coiled and contained, and he relished the film’s giddy messiness, its grainy 35mm look and a surging electronic score. For him the two and a half hours pass in a blur, and the result is less an underdog crowd-pleaser than a portrait of America.

In The Irish Times, Donald Clarke admired Chalamet’s bravely abrasive performance and Safdie’s clattering, restless filmmaking. He likened the film to a generously stuffed 19th-century novel and read Marty as an emblem of the youthful American arrogance of the postwar years. He praised Darius Khondji’s cinematography for finding the grimy corners of a New York that feels frightening and strange, and noted that Daniel Lopatin’s pounding score keeps the unease high throughout what he found a deeply stressful but hugely enjoyable film.

Tim Grierson of Screen Daily described a propulsive and bracingly amoral character study. In his view Chalamet uses his charm and poise so effectively that Marty, a despicable egoist, is impossible to like but oddly easy to follow. He singled out Odessa A’zion, who supplies some of the sharpest laughs and the nearest thing the film has to a moral compass, found the table-tennis matches electrifying, and praised the period detail created by Khondji and production designer Jack Fisk. He noted that, like Good Time and Uncut Gems, which Safdie co-directed with his brother Benny, the film makes no apology for its self-centred antihero.

Where critics were divided

Jesse Hassenger of The A.V. Club enjoyed the film as great entertainment and saw it as the strongest proof yet of Chalamet’s star power, but he had reservations. He found Paltrow’s and A’zion’s characters thin for the main supporting roles in a 150-minute film, and felt Safdie was sometimes more interested in clearing spectacular hurdles than in linking them into a larger picture. Next to comparable films about American ambition, he sensed something missing.

William Bibbiani of TheWrap was the clear dissenter. He agreed that Chalamet is brilliant and that the film moves like lightning, but judged the whole a disappointment. He argued that it never reckons with the damage Marty does to almost everyone around him, that it has no dramatic throughline beyond desperation, and that its conclusion does not follow from what comes before. As a sports film, he felt, it falls further short, because it never shows what makes Marty good at the game or what separates him from stronger players.

Who is it for?

The film suits viewers who enjoy anxious, fast-talking crime and hustle stories, and those who admired the Safdies’ earlier work. Anyone looking for a conventional feel-good sports film should heed the warnings from Grierson and Bibbiani: the hero is hard to root for, and Clarke found the experience deeply stressful. It is rated R in the US and 15 in the UK. More titles are gathered under drama.

The critical verdict

Most of the critics here regard Marty Supreme as a thrilling, abrasive film anchored by one of Chalamet’s strongest performances, with vivid period craft and relentless momentum. Hassenger’s reservations about thin characters and a missing larger point were shared in stronger form by Bibbiani, who found the film’s view of its hero shallow. On balance, the reviews point to an exhausting but exhilarating ride that divides critics mainly on what it has to say.