The Safdie fixation upon volatile characters is in full swing in The Smashing Machine, the biopic of early MMA fighter Mark Kerr, played here by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, in his first role in a long time that doesn’t feel expressly like brand management. It’s cool to see this fixation applied to a non-fiction story rather than someone as “larger than life” as Adam Sandler’s Howard Ratner in Uncut Gems. Don’t get me wrong, Kerr, as played by Johnson, is physically larger than most nouns I can think of, but he was and is a real person, which is how he is played here, even if he finds himself in a world that rewards bombast. It’s not your typical sports movie, and frankly, I’m still trying to figure out what it’s trying to say overall. Nonetheless, I found it moving and exciting. Perhaps it’s meant to be an exercise in crafting a biopic that is neither hagiographic nor condemnatory — a mode that suits Safdie’s overall style/tone of storytelling.
The film has a dreamlike quality to it, helped in part by the jazzy score from Nala Sinephro, and driven home by a structure that is wholly uninterested in focusing on the bullet points of Kerr’s life and career. Yes, he suffers from an opioid addiction, but this isn’t a film about kicking a drug habit. Yes, he’s gearing up to fight in a tournament that could place him in a match against his best friend, but this isn’t a Rocky riff. Sure, he and his girlfriend are in a horrifically toxic relationship that seems to thrive upon mutual badgering, but this isn’t really a story about their journey together. It’s all of these things and none of these things, which, now that I think about it, may be as good a justification for the film’s existence as any. Our players are not heroes or villains, but they are indeed humans. And for all the big choices being made in the performance department, none are outsized relative to the film’s contained feel.
Casting Johnson as Kerr is one of those rare instances of stunt casting that totally works, and it’s partially because of his impossible physique. While it is indeed hard to see The Rock as age appropriate for the role (he and Kerr are currently only 4 years apart in age, and the film takes place nearly 30 years ago), it also works because it’s hard to see him as The Rock at all. Impossibly, one of the most inherently iconic performers is almost completely enveloped in the role. This is both due to convincing prosthetic makeup, as well as a layered, frank performance. Admittedly, later in the film when Kerr shaves his head, the actor’s visage can’t help but emerge — I half expected Kevin Hart to show up and be comically small next to our protagonist.
Funny that Johnson’s contract stipulates, at least in action movies, that he can’t be depicted losing a fight, and here he plays a guy who, until it happens, sees losing as an impossibility. I digress.
But for all the focus on Dwayne Johnson’s “return” to serious acting, which is deserving of the praise it will surely get, he is outshined by the supporting cast. Emily Blunt plays Kerr’s girlfriend Dawn Staples. She’s a volatile personality as well (although much less so than Kerr), and as a woman who exists second to her man’s ambitions and addictions, she often has to make herself large in order to register on his radar. The miscommunication and antagonism between the two is textbook toxic romance. I don’t know what Safdie’s personal life is like, but the dialogue he has crafted reads as if it were written by a child of divorce. You can feel genuine love between our leads, but also a genuine resentment: the self-assurance of love bombing mixed with a mutual feeling of “you’re holding me back.”
The performance of the film goes to former MMA fighter Ryan Bader as Mark Coleman. Bader is the emotional anchor of the film, with his Coleman serving as the one person in the cast of characters who seems to have his emotional shit together. He works as a foil for our leads, representing the sort of quiet greatness that athletic competition is supposed to manifest, even though it so often doesn’t. There are portions of the film where Bader or Blunt are absent for stretches of time, and the film loses some of its pull as a result, but alas, it’s not about them. It’s no exaggeration, however, to say that when either shares the screen with our “hero” his character alights in new ways. One standout moment, in which Kerr makes a litany of excuses not to ride the Gravitron with Dawn, his unearned feelings of emasculation are writ large. It’s not that he “can’t handle” the ride, just that he “chooses not to” step aboard (I’m reminded of my days waiting tables when men would send stuff back on account of it being too spicy, but always made sure to let me know that “I can handle spicy, I just wasn’t expecting it” as if I gave a fuck at all what their preferences were). Dawn then rides the carnival classic alone, finding a sublime moment of serenity and superiority over her oppressor. It’s a top tier piece of filmmaking.
Also, someone wears a CompUSA shirt — the period detail in this movie is flawless.
I sense that many viewers will struggle, like I have, with figuring out the point of the film, but not necessarily to its detriment. The fact that I’m still mulling it over days after watching it rather than dismissing it like any of a number of more typical sports films tells me that there’s something unique here, and that a small, constrained look into the early days of a contest that has grown to a level of brutal largesse that often feels barbaric (Power Slap, anyone?), is worthwhile for that reason alone. But even if it were a messy failure, which it is not, it succeeds as a reminder that The Rock has the goods when he wants to show them off, Emily Blunt is an actress of tremendous power, and that Benny Safdie is already, at a young age, a generational filmmaking talent.
Also, there’s a great cat!! I love a little fluffums.
Directed by Benny Safdie
Written by Benny Safdie
Starring Emily Blunt, Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Bader, Bas Rutten
Rated R, 123 minutes
