MARTY SUPREME

Review by John Larkin

MARTY SUPREME is a reminder that the work of a great director is not merely technical. They do not simply assemble strong production design, confident cinematography, or skilled performances. At their highest level, they transmit something less tangible, an energy, a frequency, directly through the screen. When it works, the audience does not simply observe the film; they absorb it.

Josh Safdie understands this instinctively. With UNCUT GEMS, the Safdie brothers proved they could generate a palpable sense of anxiety and propulsion, a feeling that lingered long after the final frame. With MARTY SUPREME, Josh Safdie refines that ability and channels it into something stranger, looser, and ultimately more singular: a period film that refuses to behave like one.

Set in the 1950s, MARTY SUPREME rejects the expected sonic and aesthetic cues of the era. Instead of leaning on familiar period music, Safdie sprinkles the film with ’80s tracks and anchors it with an electronic score. Rather than feeling disruptive or anachronistic, the result is invigorating.

Safdie has a pronounced instinct for casting atypical actors, often non-actors, in roles that feel uncannily precise, and MARTY SUPREME may represent his most impressive ensemble to date. The film is filled with faces that feel discovered rather than selected, a mixture of actors and non-actors whose presence feels essential rather than ornamental. Just as importantly, he knows how to direct these performers toward naturalism without sanding down their individuality. His uncanny ability to recognize something fundamental in people, to see when a face or posture carries a lived-in truth that no amount of training can manufacture, helps create a world that feels inhabited rather than staged.

That sense of reality extends across the entire production, which is built by an all-star group of collaborators working in perfect sync. Darius Khondji’s cinematography is tactile and expressive without ever feeling showy. Jack Fisk’s production design grounds the film in a specific physical reality, even as the movie resists historical nostalgia. Daniel Lopatin’s electronic score, restless, hypnotic, and emotionally propulsive, acts as an internal engine, pulling the viewer forward and binding the film’s tonal contradictions together.

At the center of it all is Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser. On first viewing, his performance can feel slightly untethered from the period, almost as if Marty exists on a different wavelength than the world around him. That dissonance soon reveals itself as intentional. Chalamet infuses Marty with a distinctly contemporary sense of unearned confidence and naïveté associated with Gen Z and Gen Alpha, coupled with a casual disregard for experience and authority that reads as strikingly modern. On repeat viewing, what initially feels out of place becomes a feature rather than a flaw. Marty is not designed to be conventionally appealing. He is volatile, impulsive, and difficult, the kind of character whose forward momentum creates both fascination and unease. Like Adam Sandler’s character in UNCUT GEMS, Marty pulls the viewer along through sheer force of will, even when his decisions are reckless or self-destructive. This generational friction comes into sharp focus in a third-act exchange with Kevin O’Leary, a scene that effectively translates into a cinematic “ok boomer” moment, capturing Marty’s dismissive posture toward older wisdom while clarifying the character’s reckless confidence. While not period-specific, the choice sharpens the film’s tension and offers a meaningful point of entry for Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences, opening a window for a younger generation to connect with the character, to recognize and identify with someone on screen, even if he is far from an ideal role model.

Safdie directs the film with a confidence that feels both raw and elegant. The editing has a punk-rock immediacy, balanced by moments of surprising beauty and grace. It is a style that feels alive, rough at the edges yet guided by a precise sense of rhythm and emotion. While the third act lingers slightly longer than necessary, and a subplot involving Gwyneth Paltrow never quite reaches the same level of interest as the surrounding material, the film never loses its grip. There is always something compelling on screen, something charged with intention.

There is also a quieter but unmistakable through line of Jewish identity and pride woven throughout the film, one that gives Marty’s defiance a deeper historical resonance. Chalamet’s Marty explicitly frames himself as Hitler’s worst nightmare, a provocative line that initially plays as bravado but gradually reveals itself as a statement of self-definition and resistance. That idea finds its most haunting expression in a tangential flashback that momentarily ruptures the film’s rhythm. In the sequence, a Jewish captive disarming bombs in the woods discovers a beehive, lathers his body in honey, and allows fellow prisoners to feast from him. The image is disturbing, strange, and unexpectedly powerful, an assertion of survival, generosity, and communal triumph in the face of annihilation. Safdie does not linger on the moment for sentiment or explanation. Instead, it exists as a raw acknowledgment of endurance and pride, a recognition of historical wins, however fragile or fleeting, that echo forward into Marty’s own reckless confidence. It is not didactic, but it is unmistakable, and it deepens the film’s emotional and cultural charge.

Ultimately, MARTY SUPREME is a hypnotic experience that is amusing, bewildering, thrilling, evocative, and occasionally moving. It is a film that trusts its instincts, embraces contradiction, and resists flattening itself into something familiar. In a year defined by bold, auteur-driven filmmaking, alongside works like WEAPONS and ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, MARTY SUPREME stands as the crown jewel of the group, and the one that lingers most deeply.

For me, it is the best film of 2025.