{"id":186347,"date":"2025-10-03T01:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T01:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/186347\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T01:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T01:48:09","slug":"dwayne-johnson-crushes-expectations-with-the-surprising-subversive-drama-the-smashing-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/186347\/","title":{"rendered":"Dwayne Johnson crushes expectations with the surprising, subversive drama The Smashing Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Dwayne Johnson stars as Mark Kerr, a mixed martial arts fighter who struggles both in the ring and outside of it, in new film The Smashing Machine.Eric Zachanowich\/VVS<\/p>\n

The Smashing Machine <\/p>\n

Directed by Benny Safdie<\/p>\n

Written by Benny Safdie, based on the documentary by John Hyams <\/p>\n

Starring Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt and Ryan Bader <\/p>\n

Classification 14A; 123 minutes<\/p>\n

Opens in theatres Oct. 3<\/p>\n

Critic\u2019s Pick <\/p>\n

For the past month and a half, Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson has been engaged in a magnificently aggravating public-relations campaign in which he has tried to rewrite history that he himself carved onto the holy mountain of Hollywood. <\/p>\n

Take this gem of a quote from early September, when a weepy, notably slimmed down Johnson made the rounds at the Venice Film Festival for the world premiere of his new film, The Smashing Machine: \u201cI looked around a few years ago and I started to think, \u2018Am I living my dream or am I living other people\u2019s dreams?\u201d Or how about, \u201cA lot of times it\u2019s harder for us \u2212 or at least for me \u2212 sometimes to know what you\u2019re capable of when you\u2019ve been pigeonholed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Okay, sure, buddy. Either Johnson is suffering from a tremendous case of amnesia after one too many head butts or he is simply and desperately hoping that audiences might forget that, for the past two decades and more, it has been Johnson \u2212 not some malevolent figures lurking in the shadows of the industry \u2212 who has been, for lack of a better term, holing his own pigeon.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The film is a loose remake of John Hyams\u2019s 2002 documentary The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr.Eric Zachanowich\/VVS<\/p>\n

Simply put, there is not another actor living today who has so enthusiastically made himself the universal symbol of the kind of mushy-middle blockbusters that scream easy payday sellout. No one was holding a gun to Johnson\u2019s head when he, say, tried to remake the DC Comics franchise in his own image with the dreadful Black Adam<\/a>. Nor when he pumped out a relentlessly empty-headed barrage of streaming-first slop (Red Notice<\/a>, Red One, plus other movies that don\u2019t have \u201cred\u201d in the title). For the actor to suddenly rebrand himself as a victim of the machine instead of its chief engineer? We can all smell what The Rock is cooking here, and there\u2019s more than a faint whiff of bull. <\/p>\n

Which is a shame given that Johnson can be \u2212 when he actually flexes all of his many muscles \u2212 a tremendous performer, as adventurous as he is charming. The Rundown, Southland Tales, The Other Guys, Pain & Gain and, yes, even the Fast & Furious films<\/a> (especially the fifth and eighth) \u2013 they are all charged with the natural charm and committed energy of a true movie titan, someone who towers over the competition with an earned, despicably natural sense of self-confidence. And now The Smashing Machine just might earn The Rock his genuinely rightful place in Academy Awards history \u2212 if only the star could shut up for a second. <\/p>\n

Loosely remaking and remixing John Hyams\u2019s acclaimed but little-seen 2002 documentary The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr, director Benny Safdie casts Johnson as the real-life mixed martial arts fighter who struggles both in the ring and outside of it. That might seem like well-trodden territory for Johnson, given his many years spent inside the trenches of World Wrestling Entertainment. Yet the star works hard to prove to Safdie, to audiences and to himself that he is capable of delivering something completely new and unfamiliar. <\/p>\n

Sarah-Tai Black: Football-focused horror film Him starts strong before fumbling over and over<\/a><\/p>\n

Barry Hertz: The History of Sound is not the hot-hot-hot movie it\u2019s being marketed as \u2013 it\u2019s better<\/a><\/p>\n

While Safdie and Oscar-winning makeup artist Kazu Hiro mask their star under layers and layers of facial prosthetics (new nose shape, new hairline, new eyebrow structure, in what can only be seen as an attempt to achieve a kind of visceral verisimilitude), Johnson is unrecognizable here \u2013 not because of how he looks on the screen, but because of what he does while there. <\/p>\n

As Kerr comes up against myriad challenges \u2212 his addiction to painkillers, his tremulous relationship with his longtime girlfriend, Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt), and of course his professional opponents, an intimidating roster that at one point includes his best friend, Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader) \u2212 Johnson is meticulous in his emotional and physical calibrations. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Emily Blunt stars as Kerr’s longtime girlfriend, Dawn Staples. Blunt and Johnson previously played love interests in 2021’s Jungle Cruise.VVS<\/p>\n

Kerr, in Johnson\u2019s meaty hands, is not a cocksure, eyebrow-wiggling facsimile of The Rock, but a ticking time bomb of vulnerabilities. As a character, Kerr is not a hero per se but a survivor \u2212 a warrior who has figured out exactly how much pain he can take, and how much he needs to dole out, in order to get by in this life. Johnson makes the man a victim who\u2019s convinced himself and everyone else in his orbit that he\u2019s an unstoppable champ. <\/p>\n

It is a performance that understands, well, the superficiality of presentation \u2212 the cultivated image that you need to project to a crowd of strangers in order to win their affections while your life is on the line. And it is, of course, Johnson\u2019s keen understanding of that divide between sympathy and pity that has made his current woe-is-me press tour so dispiriting. <\/p>\n

At least Safdie, working solo for the first time after a string of high-strung character studies made with his brother Josh (Heaven Knows What, Good Time, Uncut Gems<\/a>), understands that his movie can speak for itself. Bucking sports-biopic conventions with barely constrained ain\u2019t-I-a-stinker glee, The Smashing Machine chronicles three short years in Kerr\u2019s long and storied life, that small sliver of time offering a kind of impressionistic portrait of a career instead of one that might be more paint-by-numbers. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The film chronicles three years of Kerr\u2019s life, including his addiction to painkillers and his tremulous relationship with his girlfriend.VVS<\/p>\n

For audiences used to and expecting closed-book resolutions about romantic relationships, about professional trajectories, about the evolution of the sport, Safdie responds with a series of surprising shadow punches, practically daring you to slap some conventional sense into him. The sneaky subversion is all quickly and efficiently delivered via a cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9-esque sensibility that makes the collection of set pieces feel as if they were surreptitiously captured by a nosy but effective documentary crew.<\/p>\n

Not that Safdie doesn\u2019t lose a few of his own battles along the way, including the moment where he must abruptly drop Dawn from the proceedings and thus forgo Blunt\u2019s always welcome presence. (It is more than a little deeply and darkly amusing that Johnson and his Jungle Cruise<\/a> co-star have now made two films together that rely on the pair\u2019s natural chemistry, but it is Safdie\u2019s movie, in which the couple are frequently on the verge of either breaking up or straight up killing each other, that is the most achingly, sympathetically passionate.)<\/p>\n

Ultimately, though, Safdie recognizes that The Smashing Machine is a single-purpose invention, one built to run on the blood, sweat and sometimes even the tears of Dwayne Johnson. Consider the act of watching the movie a double dose of cinematic benevolence: rewarding yourself, and saving the star from his own worst Hollywood instincts. Two birds, one Rock. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Dwayne Johnson stars as Mark Kerr, a mixed martial arts fighter who struggles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,42729,75,2922,348],"class_list":["post-186347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-criticspick","tag-entertainment","tag-noastack","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}