Marty Supreme is a fictionalized account of the table tennis player (and hustler), Marty Reisman. I had a greater than average interest in seeing this movie as I played competitive table tennis back in the day (albeit at a very modest level) and actually played at Reisman’s club in New York City now an then. However, the movie is only very loosely based on the actual Reisman.

In fact, it’s less of a sports film than a fast-paced, chaotic journey following the antics of an unhinged and amoral character. Apparently, director Josh Safdie has an interest in table tennis, which drew him to Reisman’s character.

Marty Mauser (brilliantly portrayed by Timothée Chalamet, who also had a notable role as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown a few years ago) is a table tennis and all-around hustler in 1950s New York. He works in his uncle’s shoe store but is anxious to leave that job so he can travel and play in tournaments. He takes money at gunpoint from a fellow employee (which he may or may not have been legitimately owed; Mauser walks a moral gray area throughout the film) so he can fly to England to compete.

Marty reaches the finals of the tournament only to be defeated by a Japanese opponent who is using a new type of paddle. This part of the film is based on reality; Reisman did lose to an unheralded Japanese player who was using a revolutionary type of rubber that would change the game forever (though in the movie, he uses plain wood, which is also very tricky to play against).

In between games, Marty manages to hustle (separately) the unlikely couple played by Gwyneth Paltrow and Kevin O’Leary. Paltrow plays an aging movie star who is charmed by the slick Marty. O’Leary, best known as a Shark Tank judge  essentially plays himself, a ruthless CEO who only cares about profits.

The title Marty Supreme comes from a line of table tennis balls Marty invents, which are yellow-gold in color rather than white for better visibility. Other than these fairly short explorations into the niche sport of table tennis (Marty makes a decidedly non-prophetic prediction in the movie that table tennis will one day be a massively popular spectator sport in the U.S.), the film mainly follows Marty’s absurdist  misadventures as he gets a married girlfriend pregnant, unwisely attempts to out-maneuver the O’Leary character, gets chased down by a gang of angry locals after he and a friend hustle them at a club, and gets shot at by
a property owner who finds a dog Marty was watching for someone. In another random sequence,  he manages to get into a bathtub that crashes through the floor.

Marty Fabulous has been compared to Uncut Gems, where Adam Sandler plays a similarly out-of-control character who gets into scarcely believable scenarios. The constant chaos also reminded me a bit of Pineapple Express. In all these films, the specifics of the plot are secondary to the frenetic energy of the characters and the bizarre situations they fall into.

Marty Fabulous is a darkly funny rollercoaster of a movie with a great cast that manages to make the most absurd scenarios almost believable. Chalamet manage to make Marty, if not quite sympathetic, at least someone it’s hard to root against. He moves so frantically from one disaster to the next, we scarcely have time to process how manipulative and self-destructive he often is. And he finally displays some genuine emotion at the very end.

I was a little disappointed that the history of table tennis and the life of the real Marty Reisman were not more prominent, but that won’t matter to 99.9% of viewers.

The Real Marty

 

For anyone curio

If you are curious about Marty Reisman (1930-2012), he wrote an autobiography called The Money Player. I still have an autographed copy, but it may be out of print. Maybe this movie will inspire a re-printing.