If not for the hulking muscles and cauliflower ears that show off the years of wear and tear, Mark Kerr might actually be one of the most unassuming savages you\u2019d ever meet. Soft-spoken with a kind smile, Kerr was a ferocious competitor during the heights of his career, but his best days are almost overshadowed by his greatest defeats \u2014 both inside and outside the ring \u2014 and that\u2019s where director Benny Safdie spends most of his time in the new film The Smashing Machine, which opens nationwide Friday.<\/p>\n
The film \u2014 based on the 2002 documentary of the same name \u2014 follows Kerr after he became a two-time UFC tournament champion with hopes to find even more success after signing with the upstart Japanese promotion Pride Fighting Championships. Safdie opens the film with an almost Rocky III-like approach with a quick look at Kerr\u2019s rise to fame as he lives up to the title of this movie by absolutely smashing his competition and looking like an unbeatable monster in the ring.<\/p>\n
But like any great sports story, no matter how shiny the veneer, there are always cracks hiding just underneath the surface.<\/p>\n
For Kerr, that was battling an addiction to powerful painkillers that helped him mask the damage done to his body through years of wrestling, training, and fighting not to mention a volatile relationship with his girlfriend Dawn (played by Oscar nominee Emily Blunt). Of course, Dwayne Johnson, who is best known for his over-the-top action roles with an affinity for comedy, dials everything down to play Kerr in an eerily perfect performance.<\/p>\n
Moviegoers unfamiliar with Kerr, his career, or the original documentary may not catch on to the subtleties in Johnson\u2019s portrayal, but he truly transforms into the once heralded fighter who was his own worst enemy.<\/p>\n
Oftentimes when actors best known for one type of film try something different, the reaction is bloviated and overstated because it feels like you have to placate their ego and say \u2018great job\u2019 no matter how good or bad the performance. That\u2019s not the case where Johnson is concerned because he effectively melts away into a career-best showing to play Kerr as authentically as possible.<\/p>\n
Safdie, who is making his solo directing debut after previously teaming up with his brother Josh on lovable loser films like Uncut Gems, made the right choice with focusing on only a small part of Kerr\u2019s overall career, which is mostly what\u2019s covered in the original documentary as well. Where Safdie fails with The Smashing Machine is spending too much time flipping back and forth between the friendship and understated rivalry between Kerr and his old friend Mark Coleman (played by former Bellator champion Ryan Bader) and the dysfunctional relationship shared with Dawn.<\/p>\n
For a two-hour long movie, The Smashing Machine could have used a little more focus on one aspect of Kerr\u2019s story or another but instead Safdie falls short from exploring either to the fullest extent. That\u2019s probably true for most biopics because filmmakers often stuff a lifetime of material into one movie, but Safdie actually boiled Kerr\u2019s story down to a three-year span of his career yet it still feels like a hodgepodge of moments rather than truly nailing the central focus of what this movie is supposed to be about.<\/p>\n
The powder keg of a relationship between Kerr and Dawn feels like a weight holding this movie back from realizing its full potential because we\u2019ve all seen this before. That\u2019s not to say Johnson and Blunt don\u2019t have chemistry or the push and pull from this aspect of Kerr\u2019s life doesn\u2019t deserve to be told \u2014 it just feels less compelling than the other pieces of this overall puzzle.<\/p>\n
Instead, the best parts of The Smashing Machine involve Kerr\u2019s battle with addiction where he would happily inject anything to make the pain go away. There\u2019s a truly gut-wrenching scene where real-life MMA legend Bas Rutten suffers an injury in training and Kerr gives him a dose of pain medication while promising his coach that all his suffering will disappear just five seconds after pumping drugs into his veins.<\/p>\n
The look of euphoria that washes over Rutten\u2019s face reveals perfectly why Kerr was willing to literally risk his life just so he wouldn\u2019t have to suffer in agony anymore.<\/p>\n
The other aspect of this film that really shines is the relationship between Kerr and Coleman, who both travel to Japan looking for a fresh start. Kerr joined PRIDE as an undefeated mauler with two still-shiny-and-new UFC championships, while Coleman was coming off several tough losses with many wondering if the godfather of ground-and-pound was already down for the count.<\/p>\n
Bader, who stepped into this role without a single day of acting experience under his belt, brings a real authenticity to the film, especially playing the often larger-than-life personality that is Coleman. Anybody who has ever spent two minutes around Coleman knows he\u2019s never the quiet one in the room, but when it came time to fight, he was as scary focused as anyone who\u2019s ever competed in combat sports.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s through that quiet intensity that Bader really shines, but he also erupts into moments of joy playing Coleman as he conquered the world again after it looked like he might be done.<\/p>\n
Simultaneously, Kerr has to watch from the sidelines after he seemed like Coleman\u2019s heir apparent, but instead he struggles to comprehend how he could ever lose and then stares down despair after actually suffering defeat. That\u2019s probably Johnson at his absolute best in this movie because as an athlete himself, he understands better than most why the phrase \u201cthe thrill of victory and the agony of defeat\u201d actually exists.<\/p>\n
Overall, The Smashing Machine plays like a real snapshot in time \u2014 and for those of us that lived through this era, it feels accurate and genuine to that era of the sport. The story could have used a more focus to drill down on the best and worst parts of Kerr\u2019s career but that doesn\u2019t take away from great performances all around, especially from Johnson and Bader.<\/p>\n
When it comes to combat sports movies, boxing has produced some of the best films in history but The Smashing Machine \u2014 even with its flaws \u2014 shows that when done right, MMA at least deserves a place at that table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If not for the hulking muscles and cauliflower ears that show off the years of wear and tear,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-187436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187436","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=187436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}