Film review: The Smashing Machine
The Safdie Brothers rose to prominence in 2017 – a decade into their careers directing together – with Good Time, perhaps the film that established the exciting potential of a post-Twilight Robert Pattinson. Their next film, 2019’s Uncut Gems, was even more seismic: the growing contingency of folks who stump for Adam Sandler as a true artist may have started back in 2003 with Punch-Drunk Love, but Gems is still his all-time best showcase.
In 2025, Joshua and Benny Safdie are no longer directing together, but Benny’s first solo film, The Smashing Machine, is looking to do something similar with the faded star of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. This film – a biopic of UFC pioneer fighter Mark Kerr – reintroduces an actor whose ego had perhaps gotten the best of him, whose personal controversies were overshadowing his work on screen.
The Smashing Machine follows Mark Kerr’s career as an MMA fighter from 1997 to 2000, as he shifts from amateur wrestling into the world of professional mixed martial-arts. The film centres on his preparations to compete in the Japanese Pride Fighting Championships amid his personal struggles with drugs, his rocky relationship with his girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt), and his close partnership with fellow fighter Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader), who he may, one day, have to face in the ring.
As a vehicle for Johnson as a serious actor, The Smashing Machine is largely successful. A heavy layer of prosthetic makeup and fake hair transforms Johnson into Mark Kerr, and although the effect throughout the film is inconsistent (sometimes The Rock looks like himself, and sometimes he doesn’t, which would perhaps feel like an intentional decision in a smarter movie) when it works, it really works. Johnson plays Kerr as a mannered man, despite his hulking mass, one with a quiet anger that can suddenly boil over. He has a stronger “take” on Kerr than the film’s script does.
Johnson is excellent, as is Emily Blunt, which makes sense, because there’s no such thing as a bad Emily Blunt performance. The movie is, in large part, about their relationship, but it’s unclear by the end what we’re meant to take from the various scenes of them arguing and reconciling. This is a problem across the whole film: a lack of any real perspective on the lives it’s portraying.
A movie does not necessarily need to carry a deep message or moral, but The Smashing Machine portrays all of its fighting – in the ring and outside of it – with a level of remove. Johnson is magnetic, and has a clear handle on the character moment-to-moment, but the movie struggles to reconcile all of the man’s facets into a whole human. When the movie’s final moments make it clear how Safdie believes we should feel about the man – it literally spells his feelings out in big letters – it doesn’t quite square with what the movie has actually portrayed.
There’s a general strangeness to The Smashing Machine that Safdie perhaps could have leaned into harder. Johnson, who is 53 in real life, is playing Kerr in his early 30s; Ryan Bader, who is meant to be his older, more experienced friend, is actually 11 years younger. The Rock may be transformed, but he doesn’t disappear into the role, and it feels like there might be a version of this film somewhere that has more to say about identity. As it stands, the film can’t seem to decide if he’s rich or living pay to pay, if he has an anger problem or if the real issue is that his girlfriend keeps nagging him, if we’re meant to worry about this man relapsing into drug use again or not. It’s entertaining throughout, despite all of this, but it certainly could have been more compelling.
The Smashing Machine is not a bad movie, anchored as it is by two great performances. Johnson and Blunt have real chemistry, and Kerr is, at his core, an interesting figure. Safdie’s film can’t quite figure out what exactly it wants to be, but there’s still something to be said for getting a film where The Rock – one of the world’s biggest movie stars – finally feels ready to put the work in again.
The Smashing Machine is in cinemas now.
James O’Connor has been writing about pop culture and games since 2008. He is the author of Untitled Goose Game for Boss Fight Books.
