Marty Supreme is a two and a half hour film based loosely on American table tennis champion, Marty Reisman. It features an extremely unlikable and self centered main character who does things throughout the film that will have you questioning how this movie was ever about table tennis in the first place. It’s hard to find a genre that this movie falls under. Could it be considered a biopic? Sports fiction? Who’s to say?

Directed by Josh Safdie, the story follows the fictional character Marty Mouser (played by Timothee Chalamet) as he attempts to prove himself as a professional table tennis player. The movie drops you into his story as he’s a young adult working at his uncle’s shoe store. We are introduced to his girlfriend Rachel (played by Odessa A’zion), who, early in the movie, reveals to Marty that she is pregnant. Regardless, Marty plans to leave the country to play in the British open for table tennis. He heads off to London, where he navigates his participation in the British Open, as well as an affair with a famous ex-movie star. He loses the open to Endo, the extremely skillful Japanese table tennis player. Soon after he left London, he received a fine from the International Table Tennis Association for running up his hotel bill on room service at the Ritz. Marty engages in a series of odd jobs (and a few crimes) in order to pay off his debt. A farmhouse shootout and an in-labor girlfriend later, Marty ends up in Tokyo. He is set to face off against Endo in a match to continue to raise money to pay off his debt, as well as redeem himself from his loss at the British Open. He then returns to the U.S. and the story concludes with Marty meeting his son, who was born to his girlfriend while he was in Japan.

Some might agree the story is too fictional to be a biopic, but not sports oriented enough to be a sports fiction. What matters is that it’s a story about having a dream and a man who will do anything, no matter how morally incorrect it may seem, to achieve it. Marty often makes terrible decisions in this movie and only seems to care about one thing: table tennis. This movie invokes many emotions and at some points even makes you hate the main character, but I believe it’s his character flaws and bad decisions that make him an interesting and deep character.