'Marty Supreme' Is a Love Letter to the Underdog

“I’m really in pursuit of greatness,” said Timothée Chalamet earlier this year at the Screen Actors Guild Awards after winning the best actor prize for his turn as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown (2024). His chutzpah was startling but also weirdly charming given the faux-humility of the standard acceptance speech. “I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats,” he continued, invoking the names of Marlon Brando, Meryl Streep, and Michael Jordan. Whatever you make of Timmy’s ego, his remarks offer something of an amuse-bouche to the pleasures of watching him in Marty Supreme, in which he embodies the hubristic table-tennis prodigy Marty Mauser—a proof of concept if ever there was one.