Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine deliberately
avoids the standard playbook of the sports biopic. Instead of immersing viewers
in adrenaline-filled, crowd-pleasing moments, Safdie takes a detached, almost
clinical perspective. Fight sequences are shot from outside the ring or high
above, with ropes often fragmenting the frame—reminding us of the camera’s
presence rather than pulling us into the chaos. Layered over this are bursts of
pop-rock or jazz-driven scoring, cues that further emphasize that this is a
constructed narrative, not an attempt at gritty realism.
Where most sports dramas seek to draw you close, this one
keeps its distance—even in its casting. The decision to put Dwayne “The Rock”
Johnson in the role of MMA pioneer Mark Kerr immediately invites viewers to
make connections between Johnson’s wrestling persona and Kerr’s overlooked
legacy. But Safdie isn’t interested in offering a straightforward celebration
of Kerr’s career. Instead, by stripping away the typical sports-movie
beats—training montages, climactic underdog victories—he leaves behind a loose,
unconventional film that feels more like an experiment. When the expected
late-act conflicts finally appear, they don’t land with emotional force, but
what remains compelling is Johnson’s surprisingly restrained performance and
Safdie’s willingness to push against genre convention.
The film traces Kerr’s journey between 1997 and 2000,
charting his rise during MMA’s chaotic early days. Using John Hyams’ 2002
documentary as a blueprint, Safdie begins with Kerr’s first tournament in São
Paulo, portraying the sport’s raw brutality before UFC became mainstream.
Kerr’s career takes him to Japan’s Pride Fighting Championships, where an
illegal move in an early fight leads to a no-contest ruling. The setback
triggers his downward spiral into drug dependency, fueled by his turbulent
relationship with Dawn (Emily Blunt). While Kerr later manages to clean up,
Dawn does not, and tensions at home collide with his professional rivalry with
friend-turned-competitor Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader).
Safdie surrounds Johnson and Blunt with real MMA
figures—including Bader, Satoshi Ishii, James Moontasri, boxer Oleksandr Usyk,
and even Bas Rutten as himself—further blurring documentary and fiction. Maceo
Bishop’s cinematography reinforces this vérité aesthetic, favoring a
stripped-down, observational style that often feels like a single handheld
camera capturing locker-room confrontations or intimate domestic disputes.
At the film’s heart is Johnson’s transformation. Despite
heavy prosthetics that accentuate rather than conceal his celebrity, he plays
Kerr as gentle and almost childlike off the mat—obsessed with his “sensitive
stomach” and particular smoothie recipes—before erupting into sudden,
frightening violence. It’s a performance that highlights the contradictions
within Kerr: fragile yet ferocious, soft-spoken yet destructive.
Still, when the narrative shifts into more conventional
arcs—the comeback bouts, the troubled romance—the film loses some of its
originality. Yet this may be intentional. Like Safdie’s earlier The Curse,
the project toys with audience expectations, withholding familiar biopic
rhythms only to expose their hollowness when they finally arrive. The film
closes not with Kerr’s glorification but with footage of his everyday life,
underscoring his ordinariness rather than mythologizing him.
Pairing one of the world’s biggest celebrities with a
forgotten fighter becomes its own statement: Johnson’s stardom acts as a
contrast to Kerr’s anonymity, suggesting that the fame he never found was, in
some sense, stolen by others. Whether this makes for an entertaining film is
debatable—but it is undoubtedly a bold, unconventional entry in the
sports-movie canon.
(Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival on
Sept. 8. The film opens Oct. 3, 2025.)
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