It’s hard to say writer-director Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine is bad. It’s certainly well-made. It also sounds amazing. Most importantly, it features a genuinely outstanding lead performance from Dwayne Johnson in what is probably his best and most interesting role ever. But it’s impossible to say The Smashing Machine is good. It’s masquerading as a brutal, honest, raw story about a world-class athlete struggling with addiction, co-dependence, and the desperate need to win. What it actually is an empty, frustrating hagiography (that is, an overly flattering and idolizing biography).
The Smashing Machine follows MMA legend Mark Kerr from 1997 to 2000, which are the early, controversial days of what is now a billion dollar industry. Despite him beginning his mixed martial arts career during this period, he’s already addicted to painkillers. He’s already also with his girlfriend Dawn. While the movie over explains (in a way that doesn’t feel convincing) why winning drives him to compete, it doesn’t reveal much about Kerr otherwise. We don’t know where he came from, why he seemingly doesn’t have any family, or how literally anything in his life shaped the man he became. He just sort of exists. All we really know is that he’s a kind, soft-spoken, otherwise gentle guy who bottles everything up and occasionally flies off the handle.
Dawn (Emily Blunt) yells at him to let her in emotionally so many times it feel as though The Smashing Machine is trying to get ahead of this exact criticism. It seems to tell us Mark Kerr is simply unknowable and therefore we shouldn’t hold it against the movie that it doesn’t really understand him either. It’s not a compelling argument. If the film explained why these two people, who seemingly don’t even like each other, got together in the first place, it would make that a little easier to accept.
Maybe Mark changed? Maybe Mark suffered some kind of trauma? Or maybe Mark, who actually seems very emotional a lot of the time, is more than just a fighter? Does he have other stuff going on? I wouldn’t know. I only sat through this entire two hour film which is entirely about him. You expect me to know something about him now?
The only reason Mark Kerr doesn’t feel like a total mystery to me is because of Dwayne Johnson. A big muscle-bound fighter might seem like an obvious part for him. But this role is completely outside of his comfort zone. It pushes him to places we rarely see him go. And he crushes it. He completely loses himself in the part. Unlike most of his roles, “The Rock” is nowhere to be found in this movie. He’s vulnerable, dorky, awkward, and stands outs most in quiet moments.
It’s a great performance that is both exciting and frustrating. Exciting because it’s unlike the kind of similar character he’s been playing for a long time. Frustrating because he should have been doing this for a long time. He could have had a much better career so far because Dwayne Johnson can act. He can, and should, leave The Rock in the wrestling ring when he enters the silver screen.
Emily Blunt can also act, but we knew that. Like Mark, the film doesn’t seem to really care who Dawn is and why. Like Johnson, Blunt makes her interesting anyway. She feels like a real person. That’s also due to the fact The Smashing Machine does one interesting thing with her character. Unlike most boxing/MMA movies, where the loving significant other with a heart of gold helps center a rage-filled fighter, the movie takes the bold stance of saying women can also be messy a**holes. Dawn is as troubled and frustrating as Mark, just in different ways. It’s not the film’s only clever inversion of an old sports movie trope, but it’s definitely the best.
Unexpected moments and outcomes make the end of The Smashing Machine a lot more interesting than the start and middle. Yet, in fairness, I was never bored by the movie. I didn’t even find anything outright bad with the exception of a horribly written, unseen sports announcer. It’s not a bad movie. It just “is.” The result is a very frustrating film that goes nowhere. It’s technically about lots of stuff—competition, relationships, winning and losing, addiction, dedication—but it’s really not about anything. Safdie simply made a tribute to someone he admires because he wants us to appreciate that person, too.
I wasn’t even really sure what the point of The Smashing Machine was until Safdie ended it by telling us. Text cards say that today MMA athletes can earn millions while being known around the world. That’s only possible because of the forgotten pioneers of the sport who put themselves through hell for very little. The Smashing Machine exists to tell us a nice man named Mark Kerr was one of those people and we should know his name.
Mission accomplished, The Smashing Machine. I know Mark Kerr’s name. Maybe if I knew anything else about him after seeing this movie, it might have also accomplished the mission of delivering a great film. Maybe then I wouldn’t be far more interested in seeing how he dealt with the events of this movie than what this movie showed. Yeah, I left wishing I saw what would essentially be this movie’s sequel way more than what I’d just seen. Because what I’d just seen was a well-disguised, hollow hagiography hiding behind a great Dwayne Johnson performance.
The Smashing Machine hits theaters on October 3.
The Smashing Machine ⭐ (3 of 5)
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Source: Kiat Media
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