Review: The Smashing Machine – It will Rock you
Directed by Benny Safdie
Starring Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader
8/10
With the Safdie bros bringing out the very best in Adam Sandler with Uncut Gems, the same has occurred with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in The Smashing Machine. Although it’s just one of the brothers this time, this sports film takes an engrossing and dramatic dive into the world of MMA and the sacrifice its performers must take on their bodies and lives to be able to achieve (what is apparently) the greatest feeling: winning.
Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) is one of the most prominent MMA fighters, but at a time when this sport was far from being a household name. Throughout 1999 and 2000, he competes with fellow fighters across the USA and in Japan, steadily making a decent income. Steroids also weren’t a household name at the time, and his girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt) witnesses firsthand their physical and emotional impact on him.
The Smashing Machine is for sure an emotional powerhouse without having to overstretch itself. Much of this weight comes from Johnson’s performance, a very drastic departure from his usual blockbuster roles, yet he absolutely steps up to the challenge of playing this real-life man. He doesn’t just wear his heart on his sleeve but on his entire body, giving a performance that is as emotional as it is physical. It seems he can give away so much that’s happening internally just from his humongous back alone.
Directed by one half of the now separated Safdie brothers (the other half, Josh, has his own sports film coming out in a few months, Marty Supreme), this is certainly in some respects a storytelling departure from when the brothers made their films together. The likes of Uncut Gems, Good Time, Heaven Knows What, and Daddy Longlegs had an off-the-cuff sensibility that resulted in wild shifts and turns in the story that seemed to mirror the erraticity of its main characters.
The Smashing Machine’s main character is quite a bit more focused, as is his life, so the film follows suit. It honestly has a more general and tropey style of story, with not too much surprise to be had. There are still two big surprises: one of which is an irony at the ending, and the other is the girlfriend character.
Normally in biopics of this kind, the girlfriend or wife character can seem like the rock (pun intended) to the main character, centring him in all his woes and being his main supporter from the sidelines, like in Rocky (or they’re just the man’s punching bag, like in Raging Bull). But The Smashing Machine treats her differently: she’s initially a big proponent of Mark shedding the bad habits that afflict many contact sports fighters before becoming a hypocritical proponent of much of the unneeded negativity in Mark’s life. There’s no nicer way to put it: she’s a bit of a bitch.
The shared DNA the Safdie Bros films have with this solo Safdie film is the sympathetic attention it places on its central character, utilising doco-drama camerawork (and a killer soundtrack) to really get into not just the mind but also the body of its main man. This could’ve landed flat without such a surprisingly great performance from The Rock, though something suggests that he’s really been through this kind of life before.
DAVID MORGAN-BROWN