Marty Supreme Is Almost Perfectly Unhinged — and That’s the Problem.

Timothée Chalamet has been digitally bullying us for months. Marty Supreme came out on Boxing Day, and he made sure we knew it. The obsession with a painfully basic shade of orange. The jackets. The Druski Talent Show. The screaming from the top of the Sphere. The almost delusional self-belief in the film and his performance in it. And finally, the EsDeeKid remix (which I’m not entirely convinced isn’t Chalamet himself). The marketing wasn’t just effective; it was entertaining, ironic, excessive, and just as unhinged as the film it was selling — it was performance art.

There was never any doubt that I was going to watch it. A marketing run like that doesn’t really give you the choice to opt out, and I was clearly happy to be sold. So one night, bored at home, I bought a ticket to the 11:30PM screening at the cinema closest to me. I went in open minded and largely clueless. 

Ironically, despite months of a marketing run that I was clearly entertained by, I actually couldn’t have told you what the film was about prior to watching it. I had a vague idea: a film about table tennis, directed by the filmmaker behind Uncut Gems, starring Timothée Chalamet alongside Tyler the Creator, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Odessa A’zion — a cast compelling enough to at least justify curiosity. But a film about table tennis? I wasn’t sure how that was meant to hold my attention. I hadn’t left my house in the middle of the night because of its story; I did it because the marketing had done its job. Still, I stayed for over two hours to see whether the film could live up to the chaos it had promised.

I can categorically say that it almost immediately does.

Marty Supreme is, in the most literal sense, an overcaffeinated film. I bought a latte at the concession stand beforehand, worried I might fall asleep. In hindsight, I could have done without it. The film itself is a stimulant. It starts off relentless and thrilling, daring you to keep up, and there is something genuinely exhilarating about that. Every scene feels like a head spinner. The twists are wild, aggressive, and not what I expected from a film centred on table tennis. It moves with such audacity that your instinct is to surrender to it, lock in, accept the dare, and see if you can last. 

At first, that relentlessness is the point. It’s what hooked me and kept me at the edge of my seat. But somewhere in the second half, the very thing that intrigued me about the film began to work against it.

There were moments where I found myself wondering why we were still in it. What initially felt thrilling and audacious eventually became exhausting. The film never really allows itself, or its audience, to pause. It’s like being trapped on a rollercoaster that refuses to stop at the platform. Amusement parks are fun, sure, but I don’t want to spend every second on a ride. Sometimes, I want to take a beat and actually feel where I am. Marty Supreme doesn’t allow for that. 

Nowhere is this more evident than in the ending. The film clearly wants to land on a note of catharsis or grace, but it hasn’t slowed down enough to earn that emotional shift. The ending doesn’t really feel like something we arrive at with Marty, or something we discover through him. Instead, it feels imposed, as though the film suddenly asks you to feel deeply without having given you the space to do so.

Timothee Chalamet, to his credit, does everything he can to bridge that gap. He is, undeniably, a great crier. And while I was moved in those final moments, I was also oddly unsure of what to do with myself. The emotion I felt came less from the story than from the sheer conviction of his performance. I believed him completely, even when I wasn’t convinced by the film around him.

While the supporting cast is strong, Chalamet’s performance is, without question, the film’s greatest strength. He is remarkable in it. The physicality alone is astonishing — his movements, his posture, the feral intensity of his delivery. He does something really tricky and genuinely impressive: he gives Marty charisma without making him likable. Marty is a huge douche. He is abrasive, selfish, and throughout the film, he doesn’t exactly stack up a list of redeeming qualities. And somehow, against my better judgement, I found myself rooting for him. That tension, between repulsion and investment, is quite hard to pull off and Chalamet manages it with precision.

Even when the script refuses to go there, Chalamet nearly gives Marty an inner life. You can almost feel him reaching for introspection and moments of self reflection. But every time he gets close, the film yanks the camera back into chaos. Momentum wins the battle over reflection, again and again, as if the film is actively resisting its own emotional depth.

As a viewer, this left me extremely frustrated. Marty Supreme is thrilling, funny, and technically impressive, but it doesn’t feel emotionally complete. Like that never-ending rollercoaster, Chalamet’s performance is trapped in a film that refuses to let any emotional beat land.

Maybe that refusal to sit still is its statement. Maybe the film’s point is simply to showcase the inevitable car crash that is Marty’s delusion, desperation, and his almost manufactured sense of purpose, framed as ambition. But for me, the lack of space to breathe and reflect ultimately robs the film of the feelings it so clearly wants us to have by the time the credits roll.

Marty Supreme dares you to keep up, and it certainly compelled me to focus. I did. I just wish it could have trusted us — or itself — enough to slow down and feel more as it did.

★★★ ½ ☆