Sometimes a line of movie dialogue jumps off the screen, and not always in a good way: About midway through The Smashing Machine, fighter Mark Kerr (played by Dwayne Johnson) and his girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt) argue heatedly, prompting her to yell, “You don’t know a thing about me!” And that line hits hard that far into the movie; I didn’t, in fact, know a single thing about her. Or about him. And that was a problem.
Writer-director Benny Safdie, making his solo debut without brother Josh, clearly aims to avoid the clichés of the sports biopic — the character’s backstory, the motivations behind his drive to succeed — but he hasn’t replaced them with anything else. And so The Smashing Machine winds up being a film about a dedicated athlete who weathers some ups and downs, and about his volatile relationship with a woman he supposedly loves, with almost no details about who these people are and why they do what they do.
Perhaps Safdie assumes everyone coming to see his movie has already watched the documentary of the same name that premiered on HBO in 2003, but anyone walking into the theater without already knowing Mark Kerr’s life story and his significance to sports isn’t going to glean it from this fictionalized version. We’re left with the story of a gentle giant, soft-spoken and deferential outside the ring, who climbs the ranks of mixed martial arts, years before that tough, violent sport would become a global phenomenon.
Johnson has transformed his already legendary physique into something even more imposing, with prosthetics wizard Kazu Hiru altering the actor’s visage to more closely resemble Kerr, and his performance hints at the movie this might have been, had it a sharper screenplay. Kerr’s friendship with Mark Coleman (MMA fighter Ryan Bader, in an impressive, empathetic screen debut) and Kerr’s battles with substance abuse both register as rare moments of insight into the character, and these plotlines offer Johnson his most resonant moments.
Blunt gives it her all, but The Smashing Machine offers even less of a sense of who Dawn is than it does for Kerr. Is she mistreated or abusive? Does her devotion to Kerr diminish her own life, or does her entire existence revolve around taking care of him? The movie apparently has no idea, and while Blunt absolutely commits to whatever each discrete scene seems to think about Dawn, there’s never a chance for a full performance to cohere.
As for the fight sequences, edited by Safdie and shot by cinematographer Maceo Bishop (Showtime’s The Curse), they’re shot and cut distinctly even as the fighting itself descends into repetition. (More than one match ends with a fighter knocking the other on his back, then climbing atop his chest, then punching him in the face until the ref declares a winner.) But while Safdie’s editing of Uncut Gems and Good Time went a long way toward making those movies unforgettably, and often unbearably, tense and suspenseful, The Smashing Machine never elevates the pulse or tightens its grip around your chest.
It’s entirely possible that Benny Safdie was out to craft a different kind of underdog sports movie, one where the audience isn’t manipulated into raising a triumphant fist at the end. But surely the writer-director-editor hoped for more than a disinterested shrug.
Director: Benny Safdie
Screenwriter: Benny Safdie
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader, Bas Rutten
Producers: Benny Safdie, Eli Bush, Hiram Garcia, Dany Garcia, David Koplan
Executive producer: Tracey Landon
Cinematographer: Maceo Bishop
Production design: James Chinlund
Editing: Benny Safdie
Music: Nala Sinephro
Sound design: Michael Feuser, supervising dialogue and adr editor
Production companies: A24, Magnetic Fields Entertainment, Out for the Count, Seven Bucks Productions
In English
123 minutes
