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Marty Supreme

     
          3.5 Stars out of 4





Someone asked me the other day why I hate Marvel movies. I had to think about it for a second. It's not really that I HATE them. I just think there are a lot of stories worth telling that really happened. True stories. History. Real people. There really was a guy named Marty Reisman who hustled Ping-Pong while living one hell of a crazy life. Although this movie isn't a one-to-one Biography, there was a real guy who did a lot of this crazy stuff.

But that's still not quite enough to make a great movie. You still have to tell the story in an engaging way. Shoot the scenes. Find the right actors. 

Now about about that, "find the right actor" part. Man is Timothée Chalamet having a moment right now. I was pretty skeptical they could make a movie about Bob Dylan correctly. He's just too complicated. But somehow Chalamet absolutely nailed it.

He's just as good here. Inhabiting a man with extreme talent and confidence who unfortunately also makes a lot of terrible decisions. At heart he is a hustler, and as the old saying goes, "hustlers never work and workers never hustle." Marty was doing well as shoe salesman and even got offered a job as a store manager. But he's got a much bigger dream and a much bigger hustle in mind. 

They also cast the guy from Shark Tank as the bad guy. A snarky, greedy, amoral, cuck of a man who repeatedly makes things hard for Marty. As far as I can tell, he was playing himself. Watch the movie. You'll hate him.

There are a lot of twists and turns in this movie, much as there was in the life of the man he is based on. He really did open for the Harlem Globetrotters, play all over the world and become a world champion. 

But Chalamet plays him as a man who always seems to be 20 bucks short of where he needs to be. The movie resembles Uncut Gems, in that there is a kind of anxiety in virtually every scene of the movie and in every decision Marty seems to make. He's not exactly a hero but you root for him anyway. 

The movie picks an interesting place to end with Marty holding his newborn baby. Are we to believe this is the start of a new chapter for Marty? That it will help him grow up and make better decisions? It isn't often the case with men like this. But as I read the biography of Marty Reisman, I realize he did a lot of great things in his later years. Sometimes being responsible for someone or something else is exactly what people like this need. 

This one is worth a watch.





 

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