Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine gives Dwayne Johnson a plum dramatic role that allows him to return to his roots, in a way, after years of grinding away in Hollywood tent poles. Here, the artist formerly known as the Rock plays the gregarious mixed martial arts legend Mark Kerr, who was on the vanguard of the fledgling sport in the late 1990s.
Johnson, of course, understands the mindset of a prized fighter from his days as a WWF icon and, like Kerr, knows the adrenaline rush that comes from performing before a roaring crowd. That isn’t to say that the role comes off as any less of a calculated career move for the star, but Johnson at least appears to be committed to playing a nuanced character for perhaps the first time since his offbeat turn in Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain more than a decade ago.
We immediately see Johnson leaning into the intensity of his pro-wrestling days in an opponent-thrashing opening credits montage that depicts Mark’s breakthrough at Brazil’s World Vale Tudo Championship in 1997. Afterwards, the film cuts to Mark in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, as he strikes up a conversation with an elderly woman who notices the bruises on his face. While fruitless in his attempt to convince the horrified woman of the merits of mixed martial arts, he nevertheless wins over her and the grandson who she’s accompanying with his outsized charm, a quality that Johnson has no trouble putting on convincing display.
This scene, as well as many others throughout The Smashing Machine, is recreated verbatim from John Hyams’s 2002 documentary of the same name about Mark. It’s understandable that Safdie, known for the nervy immediacy of his collaborations with his brother Josh Safdie, would want to hew so close to the fly-on-the-wall documentary’s events, especially considering that it abounds in the sort of subtly revealing moments that usually don’t make it into biopics. But despite the retro vérité aesthetic that Safdie employs to give Mark’s story a stylish new coat of paint, all that his version ultimately does is whip up a feeling of déjà vu.
The film largely revolves around Mark’s personal struggles, namely his opioid addiction, which stems from him trying to manage long-term pain from injuries suffered in the ring, and the strain it places on his relationship with his girlfriend, Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt). Safdie devises some new sequences around these events, dramatizing the blowout arguments that Kerr and Staples were having behind closed doors. But the melodramatic pitch of these domestic squabbles, which culminate in a suicide attempt, isn’t especially compelling because it’s so calculated to elicit our sympathies. Besides, the tumultuousness of the couple’s codependent relationship hits harder when we simply hear Kerr tearfully recount it in Hyams’s film.
With Safdie so intent on tracing the documentary’s footsteps, including restaging Kerr’s matches in ways that can’t help but pale in comparison to the brutality of the actual fight footage, the film leaves it to Johnson to bring something new and unexpected to its depiction of Kerr. Even under the prosthetics and hair piece, Johnson makes it easy to see how this man with a soft, almost childlike demeanor is always a moment away from exploding in a fit of rage.
Yet the actor is rarely asked to reveal much more of the man behind the enigma, and perhaps as a result, the performance mostly feels as if it’s offering mimicry. In the end, The Smashing Machine seeks to valorize Kerr as a true pioneer of mixed martial arts who was left behind as the UFC achieved mainstream respectability, but it’s hard not to see this retelling as anything other than a means of letting Johnson make a bid for artistic credibility.
Score:
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader, Bas Rutten, Oleksandr Usyk, Lyndsey Gavin, Ishii Satoshi , James Moontasri, Yoko Hamamura, Stephen Quadros, Jason Tremblay Director: Benny Safdie Screenwriter: Benny Safdie Distributor: A24 Running Time: 123 min Rating: R Year: 2025
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