Mild spoilers for the movie…which is about a real person whose life you can easily look up.
The whole alpha-male masculinity schtick Dwayne Johnson has spent so many years carefully cultivating (much to the collective frustration of the Fast & Furious stunt team) is immediately shattered in the brutal fight scene that opens The Smashing Machine.
In the ring, Johnson’s Mark Kerr is pure physicality and bloodlust. Fists connect with body parts in visceral thuds that will elicit winces, and you can almost feel your seat vibrating from the brutal body slams Kerr inflicts upon his opponent.
Outside the ring, Kerr is soft-spoken, introspective, and even tender. The yin to fighter Kerr’s yang. And then there are those small moments where you can tell that there’s a burning rage just waiting to burst out of Kerr’s ridiculously large chest, but he manages to keep a lid on it… until he’s pushed too far.
In short, Dwayne Johnson has proven to us that he can act, and boy does he do a good job at it. From the subtle prosthetics to the slight change in his voice’s usual timbre, Johnson is finally able to let go of the ego and bravado that he usually brings to his performances. Hell, he even loses a few fights. That’s a big deal for him.
Yes, this is a classic case of “actor undergoes big transformation to play tortured athletic/musical/historical soul who undergoes a redemptive journey”. But who am I to criticise this Oscar-bait move when the result is utterly compelling?
Unfortunately, The Smashing Machine is a subpar contraption that struggles to match Johnson’s fantastic performance. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but he deserved a better movie than this to showcase what he can do. Emily Blunt definitely deserved a better movie than this to showcase her talent, but more on her in a bit.
On paper, this is your classic movie biopic: Mark Kerr is a rising fighter who fights through his own personal demons to emerge as one of MMA’s pioneering figures. It’s a compelling hook with enough emotional elements to feel almost tailor-made for moviegoers.
On the big screen, it’s a weirdly distant and oddly structured experience. The Smashing Machine is less of a sports movie or biopic like The Wrestler, Warrior, or The Fighter, and more akin to a slice-of-life story.
Rather than immerse us into Kerr’s journey, The Smashing Machine keeps us at arm’s length. Fight scenes are almost all shot from outside the ring with nary a POV shot, close-ups are surprisingly rare, and emotional scenes are staged like we’re peeking in.
Writer/director Benny Safdie is clearly trying to avoid the usual sports biopic clichés and forays into flights of fantasy. Certain things that you’d think would be given a chunk of attention – like Kerr’s opioid addiction and subsequent rehab stint – are underplayed, while dramatic elements that would function as extra flavouring are given the spotlight, like the portrayal of positive masculinity and being emotionally open.
Now, The Smashing Machine adheres to real-life events, but it is a movie at the end of the day. It doesn’t really work if you don’t complete the protagonist’s character arc… which is exactly what this movie fails to do. There’s no thematic bow, no one really learns anything, and there’s no real growth to be had. Instead, we get a scene of the real Mark Kerr shopping in the present day as on-screen text reveals what happened next… and that’s it. Life may function like that, but movies don’t. Ending it with no resolution or any kind of bow-tying feels just a touch unsatisfying.
At the same time, I can’t fault Safdie for his narrative audaciousness. Sports biopics have been done to death, and we should welcome this kind of unconventionality. However, he has stated that he based The Smashing Machine’s unusual vibe on the structure of the Mark Kerr documentary of the same name. This then raises an all important question: why even make this movie then?
In recreating scenes from the documentary for The Smashing Machine, that kind of dilutes the reason for this movie existing. At the very least, it explains why the movie excels on all technical fronts. Ultimately, Safdie’s decision to emulate the Mark Kerr documentary is a bold creative choice that occasionally pays off until it doesn’t. What we can fault Safdie for is the way his script depicts Kerr’s girlfriend, Dawn.
For all the focus on being an atypical sports biopic, one has to wonder where that mindset went when writing Dawn. When we’re introduced to her at the beginning, she is needy, high-maintenance, and an overall toxic presence in Kerr’s life. By the time we get to the end of The Smashing Machine, she’s still as needy, high-maintenance, and a toxic presence as she was 123 minutes earlier. I’m sure this is all drawn from reality, but if Kerr can be portrayed with such nuance then surely Dawn could’ve been as well. It’s only through sheer talent and force of will from Emily Blunt that Dawn manages to be something beyond ‘one-note’.
It feels almost fitting that this whole movie can be summed up in one irony-filled conclusion: Go watch The Smashing Machine for the Dwayne Johnson of it all and ignore everything else.