"This year saw them split to work on separate projects, both sports-themed stories based on real-life figures. Benny Safdie released the somewhat underwhelming Smashing Machine, with Dwayne Johnson as an MMA fighter. Now Josh Safdie has come up with Marty Supreme, a bigger, better enterprise that's arguably one of the year's best-and which I pretty much loathed watching to a point, after which its energy and invention won me over."
"Exhibit A in this case being one Marty Mauser, a loose approximation of late ping-pong champion Martin Reisman. He's an antsy Manhattanite introduced in 1952, working at his uncle's shoe store. As the saying goes, he could sell snow to an Eskimo. But Marty hates, hates, hates his job, convinced he is destined for "greatness," no matter how trivial or wrongheaded those ambitions seem to others, like the mother (Fran Drescher) he lives with yet barely speaks to."
The Safdie Brothers built careers portraying self-defeating and self-destructive male characters across films from Daddy Longlegs to Uncut Gems. This year the brothers worked separately on sports-themed films based on real figures: Benny Safdie made the underwhelming Smashing Machine starring Dwayne Johnson as an MMA fighter, while Josh Safdie directed Marty Supreme, a larger, more ambitious film centered on Marty Mauser. Marty is a mercurial 1952 Manhattanite who sells shoes by day, obsesses over table tennis, and rejects obligations, relationships, and debts in pursuit of imagined greatness. The film provokes discomfort before its kinetic energy and inventiveness become compelling.
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