The Smashing Machine pulls back the curtain on a world sculpted by muscle and relentless will, exposing a far more vulnerable and achingly human reality — a man, and his surroundings, wracked by suffering, wrestling with battles that extend far beyond the confines of the cage. The familiar Dwayne Johnson of blockbuster bravado falls away, replaced by a performer unafraid to inhabit fragility, shame, and despair. This is Johnson’s most emotionally exposed role to date — a revelation of both craft and courage that marks yet another pivotal moment in his evolving career.
Mark Kerr was one of the pioneers of mixed martial arts — a heavyweight champion whose brutal power inside the ring was only rivalled by the turmoil that plagued his life beyond it. Benny Safdie’s solo directorial effort takes Kerr’s story and strips it to the bone, presenting a man caught between physical supremacy and emotional unravelling. At its core, The Smashing Machine isn’t about sport, triumph, or even redemption. It’s about the dual nature of violence — both bulwark and bane.
Johnson, who’s described the role as something he was “really hungry to do,” dives headfirst into Kerr’s complex psyche, undergoing a remarkable physical and emotional transformation. But this isn’t just about prosthetics and weight gain; it’s a total immersion into a man whose every flaw and fracture Johnson embodies with uncanny authenticity — so much so that Kerr’s own son reportedly said, “Oh my God, Dad! You’ve got a doppelganger.”
But it’s not the physical resemblance or mannerisms that hit hardest — it’s the flicker of something breaking behind his eyes as Johnson sheds his usual bravado to deliver his most emotionally nuanced performance yet. And I say that without hyperbole — I’m not just smelling what Johnson is cooking; I’m catching the unmistakable scent of an Oscar nomination.
If Johnson’s restraint is the film’s emotional anchor, Emily Blunt brings the flame. As Dawn Staples, Kerr’s partner, Blunt is unnervingly good — her depiction of unravelling devotion and destructive dependency is honed so acutely that it borders on suffocating. She perfectly captures the toxic rhythms of a relationship where care and control have become indistinguishable. In lesser hands, the role could have tipped into exaggeration or artifice, but Blunt finds the nuance, tracing every emotional fracture to reveal a woman both consumed by love and undone by it.
Safdie directs with the same nervy intensity that defined Uncut Gems, but here that energy is turned inward — less concerned with the spectacle of violence than with the emotional wreckage it leaves behind. The camera clings to Johnson like a shadow — unwavering and unflinching — pulling us uncomfortably close to a psyche coming apart in real time. There are still bursts of raw, visceral power, but it’s the ruptures between the blows that truly land — at once rigorous and ragged, disorienting yet precise, tuned entirely to the frequency of one man’s unravelling.
Similarly, unlike most sports biopics, The Smashing Machine sidesteps the easy uplift of comeback narratives. It’s uninterested in glory. Instead, the film stares down addiction, self-destruction, and the wreckage left in the wake of violence — be it of body, mind, or heart — laying bare a man who’s come to mistake punishment for purpose.
The film garnered a 15-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival — a response that’s more than earned. Safdie has crafted something lean, unsentimental, and relentlessly devastating. Johnson, for his part, meets the material head-on — and then some. Some of his past performances have danced with violence and excess — Pain & Gain comes to mind, with its own hyper-macho swirl of blood and narcotics — but The Smashing Machine is in a league of its own. It’s a work as fierce as it is fragile. There’s no easy triumph here, only a raw, unflinching testament to what fighting — in every sense — really costs.
VERDICT:
The Smashing Machine releases in theaters, October 3rd, 2025.
