New York filmmaker Josh Safdie has his fans, and I’ve been one of them at times. At other times? Not so much.
He does underbelly-of-the-city stories well. “Good Time” was something of a reinvention of the possibilities of Robert Pattinson. But I found “Uncut Gems” an indulgent wallow and laughably wrongheaded in its attempt to make Adam Sandler show off his “range” playing a thoroughly repellent hustler, philanderer and loser juggling the balls of his life as he struggles to pass for a winner.
“Marty Supreme” is very much in the same vein as “Gems.” It’s calamitous and chaotic, and not just in its deliberately assaultive and often indecipherable sound mix. A cornucopia of ugly Jewish archetypes and stereotypes, it’s almost but not quite offensive because Safdie’s allowed to get away with pretty much anything at this stage, especially with “his” audience.
But the movie? It plays like an abortive Coen brothers project that somehow got filmed and released.
It’s built around an utterly repellent lead character, a pushy, bullying, con artist — a shvitzer and all around gonif, if you want to get Yiddish about it.
It struck me, as our self-mythologizing whirlwind of need, desires, appetites and ambition hurtles through 1950s New York — throwing a jaw-dropping Holocaust crack into into the mix and declaring “It’s OK, I can say that. I’m Jewish.” — that it takes guts to make a character this stereotypical and loathsome and this Jewish at this moment.
Anti-Semitism is spiking all over the world, and not just over Israel’s genocide in the Palestinian concentration camp that they made out of Gaza.
But this is probably the closest we’ll ever get to Hollywood filming someone as nakedly recognizable as a “Sammy Glick Type.” Budd Schulberg’s “What makes Sammy Run?” always hit too close to home in the La La Land of Goldwyn, Mayer, Ovitz, Spielberg and Weinstein for any studio to make a film of it.
Timothée Chalamet has the title role in “Marty,”playing an early ’50s dynamo overflowing with chutzpah. Marty Mauser is a smooth-talking shoe salesman who works for his uncle and carries on with a shopkeeper’s wife (Odessa A’zion) down the block.
Marty’s dream is a lot bigger than this. This chutzpenik is a table tennis champ (inspired by a real person) and motor-mouthed hustler. He’s forever brushing off his clingy hypochondriac mother (Fran Drescher) and uncle (Larry ‘Ratso’ Sloman) with “I’m NOT a SHOE SALESMAN.”
He is certain that his destiny, his fate, is to become world champion and take the title away from a Polish Holocaust survivor (“I’m going to do to Kletzki what Auschwitz couldn’t! Finish him!”).
Everything — money — and every one standing in his way had better cough it up, bend to his will and step back, because Marty is not to be denied.
“This game, it fills stadiums overseas,” he preaches. It’s blowing up in Asia. Imagine what having an American champion will do for it. He can see it all — the cover of Wheaties boxes, magazine profiles, riches, fame.
He pushes his orange (more easily seen, and more striking to look at) ping pong ball idea at a lower tier sporting goods manufacturer, who is skeptical. The sporting goods maker’s son (Luke Manley) falls under Marty’s spell.
Marty bowls over table tennis officials, rants about “cheating” and “unfair” losses and fast-talks his way into everything, even an affair with a married-rich faded film star (Gwyneth Paltrow).
But Marty’s mono-maniacal focus has him stealing money (he says he’s owed) from his uncle to make a tournament, triumphing on his way to a title and losing The Big Match — and taking it badly.
And that’s nothing compared to the messiness that awaits him back home — kicked out, on the lam with his hustling cabbie pal Wally (Tyler the Creator, aka Tyler Okonma), in trouble with a mobster who loves his dog, carrying on with the married actress while dodging his pregnant paramour Rachel (A’zion).
Safdie strains to keep “Marty Supreme” moving at an exhausting sprint for its excessive, indulgent two and a half hours. He can’t. Even Chalamet needs a breather.
Marty’s juggling is doomed to bring a lot of balls crashing to the ground. But the longer the movie goes on, the more far-fetched the way those balls ever got in the air in the first place seems.
Paltrow does a fine job of imperiously dismissing this pesky, horny non-fan come-on artist. But the script has her character succumb to this nicked and pimpled punk’s relentlessness. As if.
Trying to keep this picture at a sprint means the long running time doesn’t allow characters moments to breathe and feel humanly fleshed out. You’re proud of Drescher’s work for the Screen Actor’s Guild. Great. Give her a plum role. But give her something to play.
Sandra Bernhard and others pass by on the picture’s periphery, a parade of little known and well known caricatures with exaggerated features, in Safdie’s eyes.
Kevin O’Leary makes a strong impression as the rich businessman/husband Marty almost impresses, but then doesn’t, leading to consequences which neither he nor the impulsive, mercurial Marty see coming.
And Chalamet, shorn of the makeup that made him a beatific matinee idol to many ages and every gender, fiercely commits to keeping this guy as detestable as they get — tactless, feckless, ruthless, so narcissistic you pray that he fails — until the script tries to soften him.
No deal.
Marty talks nonstop out of fear he’ll hear a “NO” and runs nonstop because life and the illusion of his fame and success will fall apart the moment reality sets in and shuts down his delusions. He is the athletic incarnation of Sammy Glick.
But in Safdie’s film, all this expended on-screen energy and effort isn’t edifying or rewarding. It’s just exhausting.
And nothing says “F-you” to an audience louder than a sound mix that buries dialogue under music and music — much of it stylishly anachronistic — so loud it induces tinnitus.
Rating: R, violence, sex, nudity, profanity
Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Odessa A’zion, Tyler the Creator, Luke Manley, Fran Drescher, Sarah Bernhard, Emory Cohen, Kevin O’Leary and Gwyneth Paltrow
Credits: Directed by Josh Safdie, scripted by Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein. An A24 release.
Running time: 2:30
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