The Smashing Machine - Attempts To Be A Knockout Punch, But Lacks The Decisive Blow

The Smashing Machine attempts to deliver a hard-hitting portrait of Mark Kerr, the legendary mixed martial artist whose career was shadowed by opioid addiction and turbulent relationships. While stories of troubled athletes aren’t new, director Benny Safdie blends narrative storytelling with documentary-style filmmaking in an effort to give the tale a fresh impact. The result, however, feels less like a knockout and more like a flurry of light jabs.

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For Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the film was positioned as a career-defining pivot away from the IP-driven blockbusters that have defined his acting career. It’s clear he’s striving for dramatic legitimacy, but his performance comes across oddly flat, echoing the film’s uneven pacing for much of its two-hour runtime. The shining star of the film is Emily Blunt, who clearly is a level above the rest of the cast. This acts as a double-edged sword as she elevates the film, but makes others come off as amateur, which is in fact the case for the third lead, Ryan Bader (Mark Coleman). His stilted delivery in key emotional scenes highlights the gamble of casting authenticity over experience, due in large part that this is his first feature film and he is in fact a professional mixed martial artist by trade. This leaves the trio of leads feeling as though they belong in different movies entirely.

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The narrative zeroes in on a three-year stretch of Kerr’s life but often glosses over crucial details that could have enriched both character and story. The central relationship between Johnson’s Mark and Blunt’s Dawn is especially underdeveloped with there’s little context to how they met, what binds them, or why we should invest in their struggles. Dawn’s eventual unraveling feels unearned, as if important character beats were left on the cutting room floor, forcing the audience to connect dots that the film never supplies. The tagline for this film is "AN UNFORGETTABLE TRUE STORY OF A UFC LEGEND". The film spends almost no time in the UFC, focusing instead on Japan’s Pride Fighting Championships, which is an another example of glossing over important details that would provide more context as to why this story during that three year period.

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Ironically, the film’s best moments emerge during Mark and Dawn’s confrontations. In these flashes, Johnson hints at untapped potential as a serious actor, but such glimpses are few and far between. By the third act, the film finally picks up momentum, only to stumble across the finish line, like a horse rallying from the back of the pack, only to wind up in the middle.

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The Smashing Machine will work for some. It has typical story beats we've seen before, but done much more effectively in other films. The triumphant end of the film, including the final shots which fast-forward us to 2025 and introduces the real life Mark Kerr, manipulates the audience to feel like they've experienced a one-of-a-kind movie theatre experience.

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The Smashing Machine has positioned itself to be much bigger of an accomplishment than it is, which is completely misleading to what is actually portrayed on the screen. Though the real life events of Mark Kerr may be worthy of praise and an accomplishment, the story on screen never quite lands the decisive blow.