Dwayne Johnson shoots for Oscar glory as UFC fighter Mark Kerr in writer-director Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine. Our review: Word choices can reveal a lot about a character. In The Smashing Machine, mixed martial arts fighter Mark Kerr – as played by Dwayne Johnson – more than once mentions his ‘tummy’. It’s a tellingly ... The Smashing Machine review | A Blunt Johnson sporting drama
Dwayne Johnson shoots for Oscar glory as UFC fighter Mark Kerr in writer-director Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine. Our review:
Word choices can reveal a lot about a character. In The Smashing Machine, mixed martial arts fighter Mark Kerr – as played by Dwayne Johnson – more than once mentions his ‘tummy’. It’s a tellingly childlike term for a grown man strong enough to punch through a kitchen door like it’s made of balsa wood.
That word offers a rare window into the mind of an athlete whose chosen sport is so punishingly brutal. Why does such a gentle soul put his mind and body through it? Writer, director, producer and editor Benny Safdie never quite gets to the bottom of that riddle, even as Johnson – emoting through a layer of prosthetics – renders himself almost unrecognisable in his effort to become Kerr.
Based on the 2002 documentary of the same name, The Smashing Machine introduces Kerr in his 30s, as he storms into the then-new United Fighting Championships with a bone-crunching victory in Brazil. It’s 1997, and Kerr soon becomes famous for his blitzkrieg, knees-to-the-nose approach to combat. As he explains to a sweet old lady in a doctor’s waiting room, UFC brings together fighters from all kinds of disciplines, meaning karate experts might fight boxers and so on. Kerr’s background is wrestling, so he specialises in throws, grapples, and repeated punches to the face.
Addicted to the roar of the crowd and other highs, Kerr’s career goes into a downward spiral when he unexpectedly loses a bout in Japan. He complains that his opponent broke the rules and the match is ruled a no contest, but the pummelling he experienced exacerbates his dependency on drink and drugs. This adds tension to his once passionate relationship with partner Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt, adopting a similar high-pitched drawl she deployed in The Fall Guy), though curiously, it’s when he tries to get clean that the cracks threaten to turn into fissures.
This is the solo debut for Benny Safdie, who previously made films in partnership with his brother, Josh. Their co-authored work, which included Good Time and Uncut Gems, had a manic, caffeinated energy that immediately made it stand out from the indie crowd.
The Safdie surname mentioned in conjunction with a UFC sports biopic might imply we’re in for something unvarnished and brutal, but the opposite is true. The Smashing Machine is shot with handheld cameras and has a vintage-looking layer of grain to the image, but the tone Safdie produces is akin to a coffee table book of ringside photography.
Shot by Maceo Bishop, his film often looks gorgeous, but the camera feels once removed – we’re frequently placed outside the ring, looking in from slightly above or peering through the ropes. It’s as though Safdie is so afraid to make something as basely populist as a Rocky film that he purposely dials down anything that might look like a conventional underdog sports drama. There’s a training sequence, but it’s cut to Frank Sinatra’s My Way. Pre-match build-ups, as Kerr walks out to a cheering crowd, are overlaid with a woozy jazz score by Nala Sinephro.
The interpersonal drama has a similarly detached air. Besides the star pairing of Blunt and Johnson (collaborating again for the first time since 2021’s Jungle Cruise), Safdie focuses almost exclusively on non-actors. Real-world fighter Ryan Bader plays Kerr’s trainer and fellow fighter, Mark Coleman.
Other parts are filled by such athletes as Bas Rutten (playing himself), Oleksandr Usyk and Satoshi Ishii. It’s a choice that, along with the 70s-style cinematography, which also feels a little Ken Loach at times, adds to the illusion of realism. But it can’t paper over some of the staid dialogue (“I’m working my ass off for a life-changing sum of money!”) or the aforementioned sense that Kerr is a complete enigma. It’s unclear from the film why Mark and Dawn keep returning to each other when they clash so badly, or why Mark struggles so much with balancing his personal relationship with his career.
His buddy Mark Coleman has a warm and loving personal life, as we see in one scene. Why can’t Kerr allow himself to be similarly happy? And what’s the deal with his dogged fixation on being so nice, even to opponents who’ve horribly injured him? There are constant hints that something darker lurks beneath that soft voice and charming smile. But what is it? Anger? Self-loathing? A scarring event in his childhood? For all the yelling and moments of cool introspection, we never find out.
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Johnson commits to the part of Kerr, and it feels as though he has an eye on an Oscar here, but as a late snippet of footage reveals, he’s a little too stiff and poised to properly capture the loose, unusual mannerisms of his subject.
Nor does the film quite get across sheer the brutality of the sport itself, or UFC’s controversial status in its early years, when Kerr was involved – the latter’s covered off in one or two relatively brief conversations. Director John Hyams’ 2002 documentary, which Safdie visually quotes multiple times, is far more successful in this regard – and running for just 78 minutes, much more concise.
The Smashing Machine is therefore a well-meaning yet surprisingly conventional sports drama that can’t evoke the gut-wrenching emotion of, say, Sean Durkin’s The Iron Claw in its relationships, or the artistic savagery of Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull in the ring. It’s a film with style but no guts. Or, as Kerr might put it, good taste but no tummy.
The Smashing Machine is in UK cinemas from the 3rd October.
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