Directed by Josh Safdie | Written by Safdie and Ronald Bronstein | 150 min | ▲▲▲▲ | In Cinemas
2025 has been the year of the battling sports dramas from the Safdie brothers, who used to make movies together, like Good Time and Uncut Gems. Bennie Safdie made The Smashing Machine, which I enjoyed mostly for the performances. Now Josh has come up with his own feature, which is a fiery, propulsive drama that if we’re talking genre is probably more of a character study than it is a sports movie, and also more like the brothers’ co-directed material in its caffeinated approach.
Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) is an American table tennis player living in the early 1950s New York. As you might expect, his skill with the paddle doesn’t earn him a lot of plaudits in the big city. He needs to hustle to make enough money to make it to the next tournament. In the opening act he liberates $700 from the safe in his uncle’s shoe store (where Marty has been working in sales) so he can travel to London and compete in a tournament there.
His questionable choices include knocking up his married girlfriend, Rachel Mizler (Odessa A’zion), and abandoning her, seducing a former star of the silver screen, Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), while simultaneously also maybe going into business with her wealthy husband, Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary, yes that one).
Marty is a symphony of bad decisions — he will lie and cheat to get what he wants, damn the torpedoes and the consequences. While his conniving is hard to watch and anxiety inducing, it’s not to the degree of Adam Sandler’s terrifying performance in Uncut Gems. That said, Marty’s journey does eventually become life-threatening as the stakes climb later in the movie and he crosses some especially dangerous men.
This is a picture with a lot of texture. DP Darius Khondji shoots tight and close on the actors, bringing a sweaty claustrophobia to the film — that works well in the tight spaces of 1950s New York apartments, and other times when it feels like overkill, as we sink into the craggy faces of performers like Tyler “The Creator” Okonma, Abel Ferrara, Fran Drescher, Sandra Bernhard, Isaac Mizrahi, Larry “Ratso” Sloman, and Pico Iyer. In case that idiosyncratic list of names didn’t tip you off, this is a wonderfully and creatively cast movie. It irks me to admit it, but I’ve often thought of Kevin O’Leary as a loathsome corporate creature, and here he successfully channels just that persona into a compelling movie character.
It’s also a pleasure to see Paltrow in a role with some meat on it again — this is a perfect part for her, someone who was a star and maybe has been out of the spotlight for awhile.
But it’s really Chalamet’s show. He’s portraying a 23-year-old narcissist driven by his singular dream, and willing to do absolutely anything to accomplish it. It feels like a uniquely American story. He’s easily the biggest asshole onscreen at any time, but we get carried away by his enthusiasm and charisma. He manages to be likeable, even as he’s a complete douchebag. It’s an impressive and fine line Chalamet walks, with an arc of redemption awaiting down the road. Maybe I’m a cynic, but I found his final fate, and all the tears, a little hard to believe but your mileage may vary.
The movie utilizes a very 1980s-sounding score, all synths and gated drumbeats from Daniel Lopatin. That with needle drops including Tears For Fears and Peter Gabriel, the 1950s setting is overlayed by this ’80s tone. I don’t understand it, but I like it — maybe Marty’s obsession with winning feels very much like America in the 1980s. That’s a guess, but whatever the reason — it works.
