Timothée Chalamet has been doing some incredible work lately. If you don’t believe me, just ask him. Chalamet lets it fly in his latest feature “Marty Supreme”, a whirlwind dramedy from director and co-writer Josh Safdie. It’s a movie where everything revolves around Chalamet’s full-throttle performance – a frenetic turn that sees the 29-year-old star working hard to keep up with his director’s furious pacing.

“Marty Supreme” is fueled by a chaotic energy that keeps us glued to every wild, unpredictable moment. At the same time, that very manic propulsion rarely slows down enough for Chalamet to find the humanity in his character. Make no mistake, his performance is electric. But the character goes from borderline charming in his arrogance and self-absorption to utterly loathsome and insufferable. It’s only at the very end that we get a different shade of him, but by then it’s too late to matter.

Chalamet plays 23-year-old Marty Mauser, a character loosely inspired by American table tennis player Marty Reisman. Set in 1952, Marty is a scrawny, bespectacled New Yorker with an unquenchable confidence in his own perceived greatness. Marty sells shoes at his uncle’s shoe store, but he sees it as beneath him. Instead, he believes he’s destined to be on a Wheaties box as the best table tennis player in the world.

While Marty may be a tremendous table tennis player, it quickly becomes evident he’s a terrible person. In Marty’s world he is most important, and getting what he wants is all that matters, no matter who he crushes in the process. He’s a narcissist and a shameless self-promoter who uses people to his own advantage, whether they’re his mother, his best friend, or a young married woman named Rachel (Odessa A’zion) who’s carrying his baby. They’re all tools Marty uses to get what he wants.

The first leg of Marty’s run towards greatness begins in London at the table tennis British Open. There he sets his eye on the tournament favorite, Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), Japan’s table tennis champion. But Marty is never out of selling mode, and he begins shopping himself around as the next big thing. In the process he woos Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), a retired actress trapped in an unhappy marriage to a wealthy businessman named Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary). Marty manages to get Kay in his bed, but doesn’t do as well getting money out of Milton.

After disappointment in London, Marty’s whole world becomes about getting to the World Championship in Tokyo. He spends the summer performing halftime acts for the Harlem Globetrotters. But he will need more money if he’s going to make the trip to Japan. And Marty shows he’s willing to do anything to make that happen, no matter how reckless, underhanded, or cruel it may be.

As Safdie ushers Marty from one rambunctious situation to another, his antics get more outrageous and treacherous. Yet as they do, a nagging question kept coming to mind. How can so many people (either emotionally or professionally) buy into such a glaringly obvious self-obsessed fraud? Clearly Safdie and his co-writer Ronald Bronstein want us to see Marty as a cunning salesman and a slick con artist. But too often characters fall for his manipulation in such ways that make them look like buffoons.

Perhaps the biggest casualties of this are the two key women in the story. A’zion gives a superb performance as possibly the only sympathetic character in a movie full of bad people. But the script strips her of any agency and turns her into a loyal puppy dog who will do anything Marty wants, no matter how horrible he treats her. Kay is just as maddening despite a terrific Gwyneth Paltrow turn. Her relationship with Marty is never convincing mainly because she too has to appear hapless for Marty to get what he wants.

Thankfully some of the blindness subsides later in the second half as a handful of characters catch on to Marty’s flagrant nonsense. It adds some welcomed tension and needed conflict to a story that moves so fast that we rarely get a moment to process things. Still, you can’t help but be drawn to the chaos as relayed through Safdie’s kinetic direction and Chalamet’s aggressive theatrics. It keeps us locked into every crazy turn the story takes. Yet it’s also a big reason Marty’s final act conversion doesn’t quite work. After over two hours of despicable actions, he needs more than the final ten minutes to earn our sympathy.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS