Benny Safdie’s solo directorial debut arrives with heavyweight expectations. “The Smashing Machine” tells the story of former UFC and PRIDE superstar Mark Kerr. He’s here played by Dwayne Johnson, and the film’s already earned Safdie the Silver Lion in Venice alongside a steady prepackaged drumbeat of Oscar buzz. The film is based on Kerr’s struggles with addiction and fade into obscurity—a narrative already documented with devastating clarity in John Hyams’ tremendous 2002 documentary of the same name—which means the feature is always shadowboxing with redundancy. But Safdie’s movie earns its keep by focusing on Kerr’s mindset and having a powerhouse performance to embody that mindset. It’s the contradiction of a man who’s really good at destroying people but drifts through his own life on smiley, gentle autopilot.
Hyams made “The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr” before he directed any action or narrative features, which is remarkable considering its confidence and intimacy. That documentary was raw, unflinching, and more critical of the UFC itself—scrutinizing the institution as much as the man. At the time, Hyams didn’t yet have action roots. His portrait of Kerr stood apart for its stripped-down candor, its willingness to linger in muted despair. Safdie’s film, while arriving two decades later, isn’t that far removed in spirit. He leans on the same fly-on-the-wall textures, cultivating intimacy through small details and ambient unease rather than overt dramatization.
Dwayne Johnson Imbues Vulnerability and Strength
And then there’s Johnson. Casting a brand-name wrestler as a brand-name fighter sounds like stunt work. However Johnson delivers the most surprising performance of his career—and the reason you should see the movie. He disappears into Kerr’s spacey, small-voiced cadences and his opioid-clouded drift through fame. His physicality is altered, his voice subdued, his shoulders perpetually slumped. It’s rare to see Johnson vulnerable on-screen, let alone fragile, but his Kerr is perpetually on the brink of collapse. His performance is not just against type—it’s a demolition of type, stripping away everything audiences assume about him.
The strength of Johnson’s work also makes the film’s weakest link more obvious. Emily Blunt—ordinarily the more resourceful and versatile actor by far—plays Kerr’s wife, Dawn Staples, with a brittle intensity that feels more actorly than lived-in. Where Johnson vanishes into Kerr, Blunt seems to be doing a lot of nails-and-hair acting and hits every boxing-girlfriend cliché in the book. The imbalance is jarring. Johnson, who’s so rarely taken seriously, taps into something raw and human, while Blunt, who usually elevates material with ease, feels stranded. Her performance doesn’t just falter; it throws Johnson’s authenticity into sharper relief. And because the film never gives Dawn a real narrative resolution—the marriage storyline stalls without a conclusion—it leaves her as an ornamental presence that clashes with the authenticity of Kerr’s personal world.
‘Smashing Machine’ Alienates Blunt’s Dawn Staples
The irony is that the film’s most convincing relationship doesn’t involve Dawn at all. Nearly every exchange between Kerr and his confidant and training partner Mark Coleman—played by former Bellator heavyweight champion Ryan Bader—rings true. It’s to the point it seems Safdie is focusing on the wrong pairing. If the film sometimes feels like a displaced buddy movie, refracted through the two Marks, it ultimately becomes a study of loneliness. The purity of their friendship—and the possibility that the climactic tournament might force them to throw down despite their mutual admiration—gives “The Smashing Machine” some shape in the homestretch even as its fidelity to the facts guarantees an uncinematic ending. Kerr’s isolation is amplified, not lessened, by the adulation of crowds and the comfort of substances. Safdie stages the fights with visceral impact. However, the most searing moments are quieter. Hotel rooms, bathrooms, and hushed late-night conversations reveal how much self-destruction thrives in the margins of glory.
That “The Smashing Machine” is smartly made and well acted is not a surprise. Safdie’s track record as a filmmaker with his brother, Josh, is stellar stuff, comprising an empathetic rogues’ gallery of self-divided protagonists. Some are fictional, like Robert Pattinson’s petty hood in “Good Time” or Adam Sandler’s high-stakes gambler in “Uncut Gems.“ And some authentic, like the eponymous subject of 2013’s “Lenny Cooke.” The latter film, a quietly devastating work, captures a high school hoops phenom in the disorienting aftermath of dashed dreams. “Lenny Cooke” is at once empathetic and unflinching, giving its subject space to reveal vulnerability, charm, and frustration. The collage of film and video textures mirrors the chaos of Cooke’s life. The documentary’s collaborative spirit allows the young man’s own anxious, conflicted energy to inform every frame, prefiguring the kind of intimate, kinetic storytelling the Safdies would perfect in their later features.
A Very Accomplished Film
What’s strange about “The Smashing Machine” is how Safdie seems to be borrowing his terms from Hyams’s doc to the point of replicating them, sometimes shot for shot. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The Safdies’ earlier films often blurred the line between fiction and documentary, and glancing, fly-on-the-wall observation is in Benny’s wheelhouse. The result is a very good, very accomplished movie. But it’s so similar to Hyams’ doc you wonder why this was made—other than to get the Rock some very deserved Oscar buzz.
