‘The Smashing Machine’ Review: Not Quite a Knockout

Before he was Dwayne Johnson the biggest movie star in the world, both literally and figuratively, he was “The Rock,” a third-generation pro wrestler for the WWF and WWE. Johnson only wrestled full-time for a handful of years before he shifted his focus to Hollywood. But his father, Rocky Johnson, and his grandfather, Peter Maivia, both spent decades in the wrestling business. Few people alive understand the punishing toll wrestling takes on a performer’s body and personal life than him.

Johnson’s new movie, The Smashing Machine, is about mixed martial arts, not wrestling. But Johnson’s personal connection to the material is obvious in its story of a man — UFC and Pride pioneer Mark Kerr — who sacrificed everything for the rush he felt inside the ring. Chasing that high meant enduring grueling training sessions and tortuous diets, prioritizing workouts over his loved ones, and taking so many drugs to numb the pain from his injuries that he became a full-blown addict with a habit so intense it threatened his career, relationships, and even his life. All for the thrill of victory.

It certainly wasn’t for the money. One early scene in The Smashing Machine shows Kerr practically begging a Japanese promoter to make good on the couple thousand bucks he owes him; the promoter keeps feigning ignorance until Kerr basically lets the debt go. That central paradox fuels the film. In the ring, Kerr was such a ferocious beast that he earned the nickname “The Smashing Machine.” Out of the ring, he was such a kind and friendly guy that his first instinct after knocking an opponent unconscious is to ask the referee if he can go check on him.

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To heighten that contradiction, Johnson seemingly packed even more muscles atop his already hulking action-hero frame, and donned prosthetic makeup and a wig to help sell the illusion. (Johnson is 53 years old; during the events of this film, Kerr was in his early 30s.) Never the most chameleonic actor in Hollywood, Johnson also affects a higher voice and a slight accent to further complete the transformation — all of which combines to create a reasonably convincing facsimile of the real UFC veteran.

With his decades of experience in a squared circle, Johnson handles the MMA scenes with ease. And he sells Kerr’s darker moments equally well; breaking down after a particularly grueling fight and sobbing uncontrollably when his addiction reaches rock bottom. The results are quite persuasive; you do occasionally forget you’re looking at the biggest movie star in the world.

Where The Smashing Machine falters is in using that persuasive performance to say anything beyond the notion that pro athletes suffer terrible hardships that fans never see and rarely consider. The film was written, edited, produced, and directed by Benny Safdie, working solo for the first time after a career as one-half of the live-wire sibling filmmaking team behind such nervy thrillers as Good Time and Uncut Gems. Those moves generated an incredible sense of urgency and tension; the viewer comes to invest enormous emotional capital in the lives of their characters as they try to wriggle free from self-inflicted death traps.

In that sense, Mark Kerr absolutely fits the mold of a Safdie hero; no one is forcing him to accept these brutal fights that pay next to nothing; no one is forcing him to inject narcotics to numb the pain. (The movie contains numerous scenes where Kerr uses his disarming sweetness to score drugs from trainers, receptionists, and doctors.) Unlike the Safdies’ earlier films, though, The Smashing Machine never builds to any real sense of suspense or urgency about Kerr’s trials and tribulations. They just go on and on.

Part of the problem is the amount of screen time devoted to his toxic relationship with his girlfriend Dawn, played in another convincing but not especially impactful performance by Emily Blunt. Kerr and Dawn are already a couple by the time the story begins in 1997, and the movie never really explores what brought these two people together, or what keeps them together through constant arguments — beyond, I suppose, codependency.

In scene after scene, Dawn questions Kerr’s fight career and he responds with violent outbursts that stand in stark contrast to the affable demeanor he presents to everyone else in his life, including his MMA opponents. This is not even a relationship with ups and downs; it’s all downs, and so many that it’s unclear why Safdie returns to these scenes so many times to continually reiterate the obvious dysfunction between the couple.

The Smashing Machine hits some appealingly anticlimactic notes in its final act; unlike the world of pro wrestling, the fights aren’t scripted and they don’t always play out the way fans expect or want. Still, the scenes leading up to the climax feel weirdly inert, and the resolution, such as there is, to Kerr’s relationship with Dawn feels enormously underwhelming. Everything Safdie, Johnson, and Blunt do to conjure up this time and place is a technical achievement, but it never goes past that to a truly involving sports story. The Smashing Machine is sadly not a knockout. Call it a split decision instead.

Additional Thoughts:

-No movie in history has ever featured more scenes about the complex composition of protein shakes. How many bananas go in one of these things? Is it half a banana? One and a half bananas? These moments are especially funny given Johnson’s over-the-top cheat meals that he loves to talk about in interviews and on social media.

-The Smashing Machine is based on a 2002 documentary of the same name directed by John Hyams. Actually “based on” might be underselling it; big chunks of the new film are taken almost verbatim from the doc, right down to specific shots, clothing the actors wear, and individual lines of dialogue. It’s not a particularly well-known or widely seen film outside of MMA circles, so audiences may not realize just how much Safdie lifted from the earlier movie. But if you do know the doc, you know a lot of the new film already.

RATING: 5/10