ONE PADDLE AFTER ANOTHER

In the multiplexes on Christmas Day:

The Marty in Marty Supreme is Marty Mauser, a Lower East Side kid of the early '50s. The supremacy in question is at, of all things, table tennis, or ping pong. He is already an insolently prodigal talent at the sport, with designs on becoming a world champ.

Marty himself wouldn't limit his supremacy merely to table tennis; he's already intolerably cocksure about his ability to do pretty much anything he wants. Even though he could, by his own estimation, "sell shoes to amputees," he despises his job in his uncle's shoe store, regarding it as far beneath him. When some journalists in London point out a retitred has-been movie star (Gwyneth Paltrow) of the Norma Shearer or Grace Kelly sort, now respectably married to a rich businessman, he decides to seduce her, not because he's ever heard of her--he hasn't--but because why not?

Directed by Josh Safdie from a script he wrote with Ronald Bronstein--loosely based on the exploits of real-life table tennis master Marty "The Needle" Reisman--this film chronicles a little less than a year's worth of Marty's chaotic, farcical yet sometimes sinister misadventures. The task of reviewing it gives rise to glib descriptions like: It's as if Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, Mordechai Richler and David Mamet were locked up together and forced to write a sports movie without being allowed to sleep.

This doesn't quite do Marty Supreme justice; the movie is an true original. But it gives a hint of the flavor It's a comic, shocking, inspirational epic of midcentury Jewish hustling. And it's built around another joltingly instant-classic performance by Timothée Chalamet in the title role.

Although he's ably supported by Paltrow, Fran Drescher, Abel Ferrara, Kevin O'Leary, Odessa A'zion, Sandra Bernhard, Emory Cohen and many others, it's Chalamet's party on an acting level. Pasty and zit-pocked, his Marty is somehow both shameless and recklessly heroic, a liar with a streak of the sociopathic--he may carry a touch of Sammy Glick from What Makes Sammy Run? as well--alongside a passionate sense of self-regard and integrity. I couldn't help but root for him.

Safdie's storytelling is similarly expansive. The movie delivers antic, slapstick violence, eroticism and tragedy while sustaining a unified tone. Marty can make scandalous quips about the Holocaust, and minutes later Safdie gives us a bizarre Holocaust flashback that's disturbing and moving. Safdie uses anachronistic musical selections, yet he maintains a sense of period. It's a remarkable achievement.

It's also a very loud, abrasive, unrelenting movie--even though it covers months, it has almost the feel of real time--and I wouldn't blame anyone who found it a bit much. But it explores a great theme: brash, self-promoting American hustlers. And it gets at a great truth: that for better or worse, brash, self-promoting American hustlers have a way of getting what they want. For a while, at least.