For decades now, Dwayne Johnson – the artist formally known as The Rock – has been something of a poster boy for the modern, blockbuster experience. Breathing new life into the Fast & Furious franchise and turfing out numerous, and sometimes overly safe, action/fantasy/comedies, things had gone decidedly sour after his attempt to hijack the DCEU with Black Adam failed to get much traction and a string of noticable duds (Red Notice, Red One) chipped away at his hit rate.
Yep, sometimes you can’t win ’em all; which is exactly what makes Johnson’s attempt to throw himself into some serious acting rather timely as he’s now portraying UFC pioneer Mark Kerr in A24 latest attempt after The Iron Claw to make sports movies as depressing as fuck.
With Uncut Gems’ Benny Safdie at the helm and Johnson’s old Jungle Cruise buddy, Emily Blunt offering support, can the former deliverer of the People’s Elbow smash expectations and enter a new phase of his career?
The year is 1999 and the global phenomenon known as the UFC US still in its infancy as fighters like Mark Kerr put their health and wellbeing on the line to pit various fighting styles against one another in places like Japan where it’s really starting to take hold. At this stage of his career, Kerr is undefeated and genuinely seems to believe that he’ll never lose as he coasts on the unbelievable high he gets from scoring yet another victory. However, he’s also coasting on the high of intermittent drug use as he uses opioids to combat the pain of his highly physical bouts, which tends not to gel particularly well with the complicated relationship he has with his needy girlfriend Dawn.
Between the drug use, the highly passive agressive conflicts he has with his girlfriend and the fact that the embryonic UFC have a habit of confusingly changing their fighting rules constantly to meet safety standards, Mark eventually loses his first fight use to referee error and immediately starts to spiral. Having never lost before, the man simply doesn’t know how to deal with his emotions after being denied the rush of winning and soon his drug use gets progressively worse. While Mark’s friend, trainer and fellow fighter Mark Coleman tries to help, Kerr’s relationship with Dawn gets even more strained and soon something has to give.
However, even when Kerr manages to address his drug use and plans a comeback, his training and mindset is negatively effected by Dawn’s escalating behavior as the two can’t stop taking emotional lumps out of one another at a moment’s notice.
With a huge tournament weeks away and a potential life changing amount of prize money on the line, can anyone manage to get on the same page long enough to score the victories needed; or will Kerr have to face the crushing experience of defeat once more.
As should be expected from a sports film from A24, The Smashing Machine may not be quite what you were expecting from when you sat down. For a start, any fight fans hoping that the movie was using the story of Mark Kerr to chronicle the rise of UFC is going to be woefully disappointed as the pomp and circumstance of the sport only really appear to bookend the movie. Similarly, anyone rocking up (pun intended) expecting to see Johnson’s version of Rocky Balboa will also find themselves having the wind out of their sails as The Smashing Machine has no interest whatsoever in telling the story of a gutsy underdog rising to the challenge of his rivals. No, if anything, The Smashing Machine is about the rather counter intuitive story of a man learning how to lose as various injustices rack up against him. It becomes fairly clear early on that Safdie has no intention of making an actual movie about sports and is instead way more fascinated about the uppercuts and shoot takedowns that reel Kerr in his everyday life than anything that occured in the Octogon. This means that the main bulk of the film is taken up by both Kerr’s drug use and the spiteful, often childish arguments that frequently occur between two people who don’t seem to understand the other at all. Prepare yourself for Raging Bull: The Passive Agressive version…
Obviously the main headline here is Johnson finally turning in a transformative performance that doesn’t involve him being bald in a jungle while wearing a green shirt and you can tell that he’s working his ass off in order to deliver a character that’s flawed, vulnerable and a far cry from the usual hero template the actor had seemingly set himself. To give Dwayne his due, he’s pretty good, even if his performance has the same, show-your-working style that recalls Channing Tatum’s turn in Foxcatcher. While Johnson hits all the beats from beneath a prosthetic brow that makes it look like he’s wearing Dominic West’s forehead, the fact that everything about is different, right down to a slightly awkward stride and a distinct, gentle cadence, you can see that Johnson’s putting the work in and straining not to fall back into old habits.
Luckily, it actually works for the character as Kerr is portrayed as a very contained human being who speaks thoughtfully and humbly even if the guy ends up being massively uptight about such things as chastising his girlfriend about not pruning his cactus and putting the wrong ingredients in his smoothie. As a counterpoint, Emily Blunt is far more natural as Dawn, leading the way with a push up bra and constantly breaking Mark’s focus with needy requests. In fact, the most successful aspects of The Smashing Machine prove to be the least enjoyable parts as their passive agressive arguing proves to be genuinely upsetting and at times, you’re not entirely sure who, if either of them, are actually in the right. The main issue is a lack of respect for each other’s needs – Donna is far too insecure to handle that Mark doesn’t want her around for his fights because she disrupts his focus. On the flip side, Mark simply cannot handle that she doesn’t understand what he needs, but in an interesting twist, there’s a sense that while Kerr’s drug habit leads him to be the instigator in the first half of the film, Dawn’s more hedonistic tendencies take over in the second half, leaving them both culpable.
However, despite the film being more of a relationship drama with a sports background, and it having a more realistic attitude to the fact that sometimes, even the most physically gifted fighter just can’t get the breaks, The Smashing Machine’s constant deconstructing of a sport film may prove to be too disappointing for some. A lot of the things the film seems to be building up to end up being heartbreaking red herrings – a hyped showdown between friends Mark and Coleman is deliberately scuppered – and viewers expecting something more epic may be confused by the “it’s OK to lose” message.
The acting is as solid as Johnson’s torso, the drama is suitably raw and it’s an interesting look at a pioneer of MMA who never got the recognition of some of his peers. However, sidelining the UFC formative years does feel like something of a mistake when the rise of a sport and the fall of one of its leading lights could have been so much more poignant.
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