There’s No Escaping Marty Supreme: Marty Supreme Film Review

Marty Supreme. Photo courtesy of Elevation Pictures.

Marty Supreme wants to overwhelm you. If you’ve been active in online film spaces you’ve certainly seen the press tour already, from the jackets, to the pop-ups, to the team up with EsDeeKid, the marketing behind the movie is practically inescapable. In many ways, the film is more of the same. It is loud, compulsive and engineered to keep you stressed out and in your seat. What it fails to do however, is measure up to the hype it’s created, and leave viewers with something stronger than anxiety.

There was no escaping the marketing for Marty Supreme. By the time the film opened in theatres, the sentiment online was that it already felt familiar, not because of the story, but because of the cultural saturation around it. The film positioned itself as an event, (“Marty Supreme! Christmas Day!) and a star vehicle for Timothée Chalamet and that framing ultimately became its greatest weakness. The film doesn’t feel like a character study, but rather another acting exercise for Chalamet.

Marty Supreme. Photo courtesy of Elevation Pictures.

To be clear: the filmmaking is beautiful. The cinematography is striking, the plot pushes through with urgency, amplifying the film’s constant escalation. But as the plot is overstretched across a runtime that relies almost entirely on stress, audiences are left feeling empty. Beyond Chalamet, no characters are really developed. Tyler, the Creator, is grossly under-used, appearing for maybe a total of ten minutes of screen time, and these incredible background characters (like Ms. 45 director Abel Ferrara as the Mafia boss) are under-utilized in favour of some truly atrocious performances from the likes of Kevin O’Leary.

Perhaps the most telling moment came during my screening’s climax, when the fire alarm went off. Despite the alarm blaring through the theatre, not a single person stood up. The film had us locked in our seats despite common sense, and that’s what Marty Supreme does extremely well, it keeps audiences hooked. Like its predecessors, Uncut Gems and Good Time, once again, audiences follow a deeply unpleasant man as he lies, manipulates, and bulldozes everyone in his path in pursuit of “greatness,” fame and fortune. But as a viewer, I’m finding myself less and less interested in this narrative. As the credits roll, there’s nothing worth holding onto, the tension dissipates and ultimately, I’m left feeling empty.

Marty Supreme is in theatres now.