Director: Benny Safdie
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader, Bas Rutten, Oleksandyr Usyk
Screenplay: Benny Safdie
123 mins. Rated R for language and some drug abuse.

With The Smashing Machine, director Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems) has taken a more traditional approach to the sports biopic in his first feature without brother and directing partner Josh. Aiming for the story of a UFC legend that has largely gone unnoticed seems like a knockout, though I’d argue that the finished product is a more mixed bag, suffering from a weak script, saved by some great performances.

Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson, Moana) is an unstoppable force in the early days of the UFC. With numerous wins under his belt, he has a cocky certainty to his combat, but he’s always searching for the high that fighting (and especially winning) brings. When he eventually loses a match, he’s so shocked by it that he breaks down in tears upon getting back to the locker room. What follows is a journey of addiction, struggles with mental health, and learning to accept his faults.

A lot has already been said of Dwayne Johnson’s turn as Mark Kerr, with the anticipation rising following the release of the first images and Johnson’s physical transformation into the underdiscussed UFC fighter. Without a doubt, he gives a very good performance, probably one of the best of his career. While a professional wrestler-turned actor playing a UFC fighter doesn’t feel like much of a stretch, the strength of his performance comes in the collaboration between him and Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer), who plays girlfriend Dawn, and also Ryan Bader as Mark Coleman, fellow fighter and friend to Kerr. It’s nice to see Johnson, an actor notorious for playing the exact same version of himself in every role, play to his strengths while simultaneously accessing a new emotional resonance for Kerr, most notably when he has been informed that he’s lost a match early in the film, and he can’t understand it, repeating “I didn’t lose” over and over again. I’ve been critical of Johnson’s recent choices, but he’s very good here, especially when paired with Blunt and Bader.

While Blunt has less to do here, I think she makes the most of it. This is a woman who loves Mark dearly, with everything she can bring, but his closed nature and inability to see anything but his career aspirations causes strife that burns and fractures their relationship. There’s a scene early on in the film where Mark offers to take a picture with an opponent and the other people in the room, but he doesn’t include her, instead opting for her to be the photographer. A single tear quickly wiped away while she does as told says more than enough. Even when buying a gift for Dawn in Japan, he makes a selection and says she’ll like it because she likes “colors,” seemingly not knowing anything about her at all.

Ryan Bader is actually, for this viewer, the standout of the film. I know a lot of the discussion of The Smashing Machine will be around its two leads, I found Bader’s characterization of Mark Coleman to be the most compelling. As the kind of friend who will drop everything to help out Kerr, he also embodies a male tenderness that is often forgotten in films like this. The scene where Coleman has to pull a confession out of Kerr in the hospital is heartbreaking and almost reaches the heights of recent A24 wrestling tragedy The Iron Claw, another pitch-perfect depiction of male tenderness.

Director Benny Safdie has a few interesting flourishes here, starting with a terrific opening narration from Kerr on his belief in the sport and what it stands for, all set to VHS footage of a former fight. The jarring decisions with sound design during the fights also elevate the intensity. There’s a sound similar to a crashing piano, complete with snapping strings, that occurs with every head hit that really drives home the bodily damage on display.

The Smashing Machine is at its best when dealing with the relationships between Kerr and Dawn and between Kerr and Coleman, but Safdie’s screenplay doesn’t really do justice to the story around them. In the finale of the film, we’re told that many UFC champions are well-known and paid handsome amounts of money for their work, but no one knows the incredible story of Mark Kerr, but The Smashing Machine is very by-the-numbers, and I couldn’t quite figure out why this story was so important to tell. Safdie’s screenplay struggles with the passage of time, so every scene with Johnson and Blunt feels like material was left out and their dynamic has changed in the missing reel. I kept hoping to dive more into the relationships, as they were consistently compelling, but it felt as though something was missing to connect all the dots. Outside these performances, there just isn’t much meat to the story.

The Smashing Machine has a few very strong performances uplifting its very pedestrian and traveled path, and Benny Safdie provides some strong artistic ideas, but the screenplay keeps this sports biopic from truly standing out in a very packed crowd of similar movies. Johnson, Blunt, and especially Bader are well-worth the price of a ticket, though, and fans of wrestling icons will find enough to be drawn in by this story of punching and pain.

3/5
-Kyle A. Goethe