When accepting his Best Actor SAG award earlier in 2025, Timothée Chalamet boldly declared that he wanted to be remembered as one of the great actors, more than a handsome face or a flash in the pan. Looking back, it makes perfect sense that the 30-year old wunderkind’s next project would be Marty Supreme. But it’s not just Chalamet, or his character, who have something to prove; director Josh Safdie is staking it out on his own after a fruitful indie career as co-director with brother Benny (who had his own debut earlier this year with The Smashing Machine). The result is a perfect storm of ambition, and one of the most exhilarating films of 2025.

Since 2017’s Good Time, the Safdie brothers have mostly been concerned with men who are so blinded by their own determination that they can’t seem to see they’re sowing the seeds of their destruction. They teeter ever so close to being unlikeable, but are salvaged by some inherent goodness and our desire to see them survive. Such is the case, again, for Marty Mauser (Chalamet), a gifted young table tennis hopeful in 1950s New York. Marty Supreme comes from the name of Mauser’s trademark orange ball, which he hopes will revolutionize the sport once he wins the World Championship. Safdie doesn’t hammer the metaphor home, but Marty himself will be the human embodiment of the ball, bouncing around from one end to another, throughout the course of the film.

For the first time in his filmography, Safdie chooses to set Marty Supreme in the distant past, when America is still riding high from winning World War II. It’s not hard to see Marty as the embodiment of the American Dream, in all its wrongheaded bravado, seeking to be the best, regardless of what it takes to get there. Marty begins the film slumming it as a shoe salesman for his uncle, hoping he’ll bankroll his trip to London for the annual tournament. But once he arrives and is unsatisfied with the living accommodations, he rockets his way into the penthouse suite of the Ritz.

It’s here where Marty meets Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), an old-school Hollywood actress on the downswing of her career. She’s overseas to support her entrepreneur husband Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary), but they quickly begin a tawdry affair, and he convinces her to watch him in the tournament. He loses in the final to Endo (Koto Kawaguchi) a focused Japanese player, and returns to the states determined to make his way to Japan for another tournament, and another shot at redemption. The problem is that he lacks the financials to get there, and has alienated or pissed off anyone who might be able to help.

Rockwell promises Marty a free trip to Tokyo and a chance at the world championships, with the condition that he play Endo in a rigged exhibition match. Of course, Marty’s initial response is to reject the offer for fear of tainting his image and his ego, but he sees no other path to get there, so he reluctantly agrees. The problem is that his expensive tab in London has gotten him kicked out of the world table tennis organization, and the back half of Marty Supreme sees Marty scraping and scamming a way to pay back his debts. He’s tied to his married childhood friend/lover Rachel (Odessa A’zion, electric), who is very pregnant once he returns home. Though he vehemently denies the baby could be his – she, and the baby, would only stand as distractions from his table tennis dreams – he still utilizes her to run various grifts.

To further explain the story of Marty Supreme would ruin the joy of experiencing it firsthand, but the film is a non-stop roller coaster throughout its 2.5 hour runtime, and it’s mostly thanks to Chalamet’s can’t-look-away performance. An argument could be made that maybe 5-10 minutes could be trimmed, but the film is never boring, nor does it suffer from pacing issues. Marty is a character which could so easily be loathsome – and make no mistake, he does some despicable things to those around him – but we can’t help but root for him. Chalamet has been widely acclaimed for his roles since breaking into the scene in 2017, but Marty Supreme feels like the role he was born to play, and will further cement his aforementioned SAG Awards speech as a kind of promise of things to come.

But credit belongs equally to Safdie and Ronald Bronstein’s richly layered screenplay. The film’s setting of 1952 feels especially purposeful, a time when America was still riding high from winning both World Wars, spreading its influence in places where it wasn’t necessarily welcome. Not to be overlooked is Marty Supreme and its relationship to Jewish identity (something which the Safdies explored in Uncut Gems). Marty utilizes his heritage whenever it becomes necessary, especially as a kind of shield after making a particularly tasteless joke to some British journalists, but it helps to understand his mindset as a perpetual underdog who feels like he’s owed something after a period of suffering. Indeed, there’s a way to read the film as a kind of Exodus story, with Marty wandering the desert for 40 years before finding the Promised Land.

Film history is lousy with character studies of “great” men who rise and fall because of their natural talents, from Jake LaMotta to Dirk Diggler, and Marty Mauser belongs right along with them. Through pure energy and charisma, Josh Safdie and Timothée Chalamet have created a universe and a character that stands as one of the most memorable of 2025.

Marty Supreme will be released in theaters nationwide on December 25.

OSCAR POTENTIAL:

• Unlike previous years when A24 has had too many films dividing its attention, Marty Supreme is the number one priority, and the studio will be putting its full weight behind Safdie and the film to make sure as many Academy voters see it as possible.
• Chalamet is the clear front-runner for Best Actor, and all that’s currently standing in his way is Leonardo DiCaprio, the lead actor of the presumed Best Picture front-runner. If Marty Supreme cracks the Best Picture lineup, Chalamet will stand a better chance, but he can still plausibly win without it.
• Josh Safdie missed out on a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director, putting his chances in the same Oscar category in jeopardy, but it still remains a possibility.
• Also missing from the Golden Globes were Paltrow and A’zion, potential nominees in Supporting Actress. Paltrow feels like the more likely nominee between the two, but she’ll need a SAG nomination to stay alive in the race.
• The film could easily grab nominations from the technical categories, including Film Editing (Bronstein and Safdie), Cinematography (Darius Khondji), Original Score (Daniel Lopatin), and Casting (Jennifer Venditti).