Run time: 150 mins

Josh Safdie’s solo venture delivers a bruising, propulsive portrait of ambition.

Set in the early 1950s and loosely inspired by table-tennis icon Marty Reisman, Safide uses the world of competitive ping-pong as a springboard into a sharper study of American identity, class, and self-invention, built around a Oscar-hungry performance from Timothée Chalamet.

Marty’s rise begins with a breakout showing at the British Open, but his sights are set firmly on the World Championship in Tokyo. Getting there requires ingenuity of the least noble variety: hustling, grifting, and even a dog-napping that spirals into a wonderfully chaotic subplot. The result is a portrait of a man whose talent is matched only by his capacity for self-sabotage. His entanglements with Rachel, a childhood friend now trapped in a mess he refuses to acknowledge, and Kay, a faded Hollywood star married to the very tycoon Marty hopes will bankroll him, sharpen the film’s critique of charm weaponised as survival. Chalamet makes Marty both magnetic and exasperating, sustaining a performance of coiled energy.

The momentum never flags, and as Marty barrels toward Tokyo, Safdie crafts a character study as combustible as its antihero. It’s volatile, gripping, and impossible to look away from