'The Smashing Machine': Dwayne Johnson Gives His Best Performance in Mostly Solid Sports Biopic

PHOTO: A24

No matter how famous Dwayne Johnson has become, he will always be known by many as his ring name, The Rock. Johnson’s pro-wrestling career helped him break into the mainstream and led to a long, highly successful career in film. His filmography primarily consists of action blockbusters, with a few family films and detours into other genres thrown in the mix. Over the past few years, it seems that audiences are getting a bit tired of Johnson and he seems to be aware of this. When his attempt to break into the DC Extended Universe failed, he went back to the drawing board and decided to make a hard pivot into prestige territory. This brings us to The Smashing Machine, which sees Johnson take on the role of MMA legend Mark Kerr. With this being a biopic and Johnson both gaining 30 pounds of muscle and using facial prosthetics, there is an awards bait-quality to the film. And though it hits familiar beats, it makes a concerted effort to break away from the typical sports movie tropes, even if it isn’t always successful on this front. The film as a whole may have issues, but it still works as a vehicle for Dwayne Johnson to break away a little from his typical screen persona and give the best performance of his whole career.

Set between 1997 and 2000, the film follows Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) as he climbs his way to the top of the world of MMA fighting. As he becomes more and more successful, he finds himself struggling with opiate addiction and faces relationship issues with his girlfriend, Dawn (Emily Blunt). Finding himself in a low spot, Kerr decides to seek treatment and rebuild himself, but with this comes new challenges in both his professional and personal life. Through it all, Kerr pushes himself to be the fighter he wants to be, and begins to pick up the pieces of who he is as a person. 

It’s hard not to see this film as a bit of a vanity project for Dwayne Johnson, as it allows him to push himself and try his hand at something with more prestige and dramatic weight. Despite this, there is a true heart that both Johnson and writer/director Benny Safdie have for Mark Kerr and his story. Safdie takes an almost documentary style approach to the film, employing handheld camerawork, diegetic music, and grounded storytelling to avoid most of the tropes and cliches that come with sports biopics. He is far more interested in the humanity of Kerr than anything else, which may come at a cost in terms of how effective the film’s narrative is, but it evokes deeper emotions than I was expecting. Safdie’s direction makes the film rather intimate, as we are right alongside Kerr through his highs and lows. At times, it feels like we shouldn’t be seeing some of the things we’re seeing, but this makes Kerr’s story a bit more resonant and helps it feel more realistic and human. 

The screenplay does let the film down a little, though. I’m glad that it doesn’t feel formulaic, but it lacks some punch. This is particularly an issue when it comes to the significance of Kerr. We spend the whole film with him, but by the time it ended I couldn’t help but ask why his story needed to be told. I understand that he was a pioneering figure in MMA, but there’s not much here that we either haven’t seen before or that feels particularly important. That said, the storytelling is still fine, but there is a flatness to the way the film is written that holds it back a little. It also has some structural issues, with it feeling a bit more free-form and spare quite often. There is some strong emotionality that shines through and saves the script, but the looseness of the story itself does keep it from being as powerful as it could have been.

The big question I had going into the film was whether Dwayne Johnson would be able to pull off what the film was asking of him. I’m pretty ambivalent on Johnson as an actor, as he tends to coast off his action hero persona. This works in some films, but feels stale in others. His most recent films feel like he’s phoning it in a bit, so I was skeptical when I heard he would be taking on this project. I had hope that he would at least be good, but I was worried that this would be yet another misstep from him. Thankfully, his performance falls into the former camp, as this is easily his best work to date. The casting of him as Kerr ends up being an interesting deconstruction of his image, as the role lacks the infallible nature of the characters Johnson usually plays. 

The film’s opening scene posits Kerr as a legendary fighter via a match shot using VHS cameras. At the end of the fight, we transition from VHS to film camera, which the majority of the film is shot in. Once we switch to film, we see Kerr as a human being and get more insight as to who he is. In the process, we see Johnson at his most vulnerable. The film shows Kerr’s highs and lows, and Johnson portrays all of it with authenticity and in a more grounded way than we’re used to seeing from him. His complexities are apparent, but the performance isn’t overly showy or telegraphed. There is a naturalness to Johnson’s performance that helps us understand who Mark Kerr is and what he went through during this specific time in his career. Johnson does get the moment to go big with his performance, but even this makes sense in the context of the film. I went into The Smashing Machine unsure of Johnson’s ability to make the performance work and left rather impressed by his portrayal of Kerr. There may be some moments that are hard to ignore that we are watching Johnson playing a character (especially after Kerr shaves his head and looks more like Johnson does in real life), but he still inhabits the role exceptionally well, and gives a transformative performance that exceeds expectations. 

I wish I could say the same for Emily Blunt, who is fine in the film but feels like she’s drawing off of similar characters from other sports movies. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Heidi Gardner’s SNL character Angel (a.k.a. Every Boxer’s Girlfriend from Every Movie About Boxing Ever) several times throughout Blunt’s performance. She plays into this archetype so much in the film that she feels artificial and is going so big at points that it tiptoes into melodrama. The performance might fit in the Hollywood version of this film, but it feels out of place here. It is arguably the most cliched aspect of the whole movie, which in turn makes some of the relationship drama feel the same way. There is some nuance to Dawn and Mark’s relationship and the way that the film portrays it that keeps it from feeling too stereotypical, but it still sticks out considering the rest of the film is much more rooted in reality. Blunt herself is a good enough actor to keep the performance from being an outright disaster, but unfortunately, her turn here is one of the weaker aspects of the film. 

On one hand, I appreciate that The Smashing Machine is more of a character study than a typical biopic, but its deviations from the norm do hinder it somewhat. I do like Benny Safdie’s approach to Mark Kerr’s story in general, but I can’t help but feel that it could have been a bit stronger. The craft, especially the film’s cinematography, direction, and its surprisingly jazzy score, is quite good, but it could have used a bit more tightening on the narrative front. At the very least, this does feel like a huge step forward for Dwayne Johnson and shows that he is capable of more than the same old same old we usually see from him. His performance is the anchor for the whole film, and gets right to the humanity of Mark Kerr rather beautifully. Considering that this whole film is meant to be a portrait of Kerr, or at least the most significant stretch of his career, Johnson’s performance serves it well. I only wish that the film did give more of a reason to be invested in his story, but it is still interesting enough to be worth the watch. The Smashing Machine still lands some serious blows, but it just isn’t powerful enough to be a total knockout.

Rating: 3.5/5