Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine isn’t just another sports biopic—it’s a strangely tender character study that wrestles as much with the fragility of the human spirit as it does with the raw spectacle of early MMA. At its centre is Mark Kerr, whose rise to dominance in the late 1990s came to an abrupt and humiliating end with his first professional loss. The film isn’t content to simply chart his victories or defeats; it digs deep into the far more unsettling terrain of drug addiction, rage and the gnawing fear of irrelevance.
Dwayne Johnson depicts Kerr with startling conviction. Altered with face and body prosthetics and a deliberately ungroomed appearance, Johnson disappears into the role, reminding audiences that beneath his blockbuster persona is an actor who can surprise.
The supporting cast offers a mix of texture and unevenness. Emily Blunt, as Kerr’s girlfriend Dawn, provides the film with its most empathetic character. Her performance captures both the bruised resilience of a woman who loves someone destructive and the subtle wit needed to survive life in his crazy world. Real life MMA fighter Ryan Bader puts in a commendable turn as fellow fighter and sometime coach Mark Coleman, even if his lack of acting range often flattens scenes that demand more emotional nuance.
Safdie’s direction thrives in the contradictions of Kerr’s world. The chaos of Japan’s Pride tournaments, with their outsized theatrics and brutal physicality, is shot with the same intensity as Kerr’s private breakdowns at his modest home in LA.
If the film falters, it’s in its reluctance to give Blunt’s character more narrative weight. Kerr’s relationship with Dawn often feels like a subplot when it could have been a co-pillar of the story. Still, The Smashing Machine remains gripping: a brooding, unsentimental portrait of greatness undone by its own expectations.
For all its depictions of bruising takedowns and bloodied arenas, the film is less about violence than vulnerability. It suggests that Kerr’s greatest opponent was never in the ring, but always inside his own head. Safdie handles this duality with great restraint, avoiding melodrama while still capturing the devastation of a man whose myth of invincibility dissolves before our eyes.
Is it Oscar-bait by the numbers? Sure! But this is also a movie that feels real, unfussy and ultimately earnest. It’s the kind of film that isn’t afraid to take its time, allowing the performances and the quiet, human moments to resonate.
Ultimately, Safdie delivers a film that’s not just for MMA diehards. It’s for anyone who has ever wondered what happens when the only thing holding your identity together, suddenly slips away.
