A fast-paced gangster film falls into its own confusion and annoying main character, writes Iltalehten’s Juho Rissanen.
Timothée Chalamet plays a skilled table tennis player whose greatest enemy can be found in the mirror. A24
Marty Supreme – Dream big
USA, 2025
Directed by: Josh Safdie
IL rating: ⭐⭐
Only 30 years old French American Timothée Chalamet has already achieved a lot as an actor.
He has worked with several top directors and has already been nominated for an Oscar twice before (for the films Call Me by Your Name in 2018 and A Complete Unconwn last year).
This year, Chalamet is hunting the Oscar in no less than two different categories: Best Actor and Best Film. Both are the same movie. Marty Supreme – Dream big. Chalamet is one of the film’s five producers, so that entitles him to also compete for the best film Oscar. This year, Chalamet can make up for his previous disappointments with no less than two big wins.
In the world Marty Supreme has collected glowing reviews and Chalamet has also received praise for his performance.
It’s a surprise when the expected movie turns out to be a sloppy disappointment from an endless calculation.
Marty Supreme is based very thinly on a real American table tennis player by Martin Reisman (1930–2012) to life. This is perhaps only because the Oscars are often won by actors portraying real historical figures. Chalamet, who has been involved in the film’s development process for years, seems to have precisely built the film into one that will allow him to finally win the coveted award.
In the film set in the 1950s, Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, a young shoe salesman and con artist who dreams of success in table tennis. Fierce nature, arrogant attitude and endless faith in his own abilities lead Mauser to victories, but mostly only to various problems – in which he also involves many of his loved ones. Mauser as a character is an unpleasant ankle, and not much changes from that during the long film.
There is enough pace in the film, but its plot twists are so unbelievable and Mauser’s character so unbelievable that the film soon begins to feel exhausting.
Separately, one has to wonder about the age limit of 12 years granted to the film in Finland. Accompanied by a parent, according to Finnish age limit rules, even a child three years younger could watch the film, even though the film contains several scary scenes and one shootout with quite violent violence.
At the very least, interesting decisions have been made in the film’s role choices. The supporting roles feature, among other things, the director of highly violent films Abel Ferrara74, known as a world-class magician Penn Jillette70, and the United States Shark Tank (The lion’s den) series, a Canadian millionaire and businessman Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary71. In some other film, such more unusual casting choices could work, but now they only mess up the troubled world of cinema even more.
Marty Supreme it feels like it doesn’t know what it’s trying to be as a movie. Sometimes there is straight farce, sometimes thriller, sometimes drama and sometimes romance. This is not directly a bad thing, if the whole can be made to work despite everything (like, for example Paul Thomas Anderson in the 2014 film Inherent Vice). However, this time the solution of mixing several different genres does not work. Influences are picked up from here and there. Often By Marty Supreme during it feels like watching Coen-brothers’ classic The Big Lebowski (1998), sometimes going is like From Forrest Gump (1994) and in a few scenes there is movement by Steven Spielberg 2002’s excellent scumbag comedy Catch Me If You Can (Catch it if you can) in moods.
The best thing about Marty Supreme is the 70-year-old Iranian-French Darius Khondjin (Seven, Evita) description and an American of Russian background by Daniel Lopatin music.
From Seven Khondji, who was awarded an Oscar in his time, now also got one From Marty Supreme nomination, but Lopatin was ignored by the film academy, which angered many By Marty Supreme and fans of the musician.
Although Marty Supreme is unlikely to win the Oscar for best film, Chalamet will probably now receive his personal Oscar for best actor at the gala on March 15. This is indicated by the Golden Globe award and the Critic’s Choice award given by American film critics, who have already won the role.
Marty Supreme – Dream big had its Finnish premiere on Friday, January 23, 2026.
