Writer-director Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems, Good Time) helms this biopic about pioneering mixed-martial arts and two-time UFC champion Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson). (123 min.)

THE SMASHING MACHINE
What’s it rated? R
What’s it worth, Anna? Full price
What’s it worth, Glen? Full price
Where’s it showing? Colony, Downtown Centre, Palm, Park, Stadium 10

Glen “Human cockfighting” was the pejorative du jour used to criticize the mixed martial arts (MMA) fights of the 1990s, and this gritty biopic does nothing to soften that perception. What these guys do to each other is ghastly, but Safdie’s script goes a long way in helping us understand who guys like Kerr and his bestie, Mark Coleman (played with surprising nuance by real life MMA fighter Ryan Bader), are and what drives them to compete. Kerr is portrayed as a gentle giant, and Johnson disappears into the character under some facial prosthetics, but there’s no mistaking Johnson’s imposing physicality. The dude’s a straight-up monster. The film also dives into the often-rocky relationship between Kerr’s girlfriend and later wife, Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt). The film also stars former MMA fighter Bas Rutten as himself. Like Darren Aronofsky’s 2008 Mickey Rourke film, The Wrestler, Safdie takes us behind the scenes of a very unseemly form of “entertainment.”

Anna Admittedly, this sport just isn’t my scene, but it’s always interesting to get into the heads of people who do things that I would never do and find the common threads of humanity. Kerr had a rocky road; his relationship with Dawn was hot and cold and he found himself in the throes of addiction to opiates. It nearly took the giant down, but once he was able to get sober, he faced all new battles. Would he be able to win back his audience? Would he be able to live with Dawn whose temper and new sense of adrift-ness from being Kerr’s caretaker were exploding all over? The guy Johnson is portraying seems genuinely sweet, and I loved the friendship portrayed between Kerr and Coleman, another fighter and a constant life raft for Kerr. I don’t necessarily like to watch the fighting, but Safdie’s tale is mostly about the humans and their lives outside of the ring.

Glen Ultimately, Kerr’s story is a sad one. We do see at the end he’s alive and well and living in Arizona. The good news is he’s a survivor, but there’s no sense of triumph. This story is based on the 2002 HBO documentary The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr. One thing the documentary got into that this drama only nods to is how the MMA rules were changed due to Kerr’s ability to end fights quickly with his signature weapons (headbutts and knees to the head of grounded opponents). Fight organizers wanted the fights to last longer for TV audiences. In 2019, Kerr started a GoFundMe page, revealing he was battling peripheral neuropathy. I’m not sure there are any winners in sports like MMA and/or boxing.

Anna I agree. You would think with the amount of evidence we have about the devastation of chronic traumatic encephalopathy that many of these sports would lose both participants and viewers, but they seem more popular than ever. The prize for the big fight that Kerr is preparing for in the film is $200,000, and the film lets us know that now fighters can make millions from fights. Hopefully the success of this film and the fame of Dwayne Johnson will trickle its way down to the real people portrayed in The Smashing Machine. At least it got their story out there to people like me who know nothing of this world or those in it. ∆

Arts Editor Glen Starkey and freelancer Anna Starkey write Split Screen. Comment at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.

This article appears in Oct 9-19, 2025.

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