The Smashing Machine has the wrappings of an Oscar bait film. It’s all there: transformative makeup, back in time, great acting performances, heavy drama. But the specifics of who and where make this film escape Awards fodder just enough to be more palatable outside of the prognosticators. What’d you call me?!?!
Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) was one of the OG fighters of the UFC and MMA, helping to popularize the sport. In 1999, Kerr was flying high, dating his beautiful hot mess of a girlfriend Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt) and training with his buddy Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader). But we’ve caught Kerr at his peak, where the sports movie trappings of drugs, women, and Igor Vovchanchyn (Oleksandr Usyk) are just about to rear their ugly heads just in time for Japan’s 2000 Pride Grand Prix tournament for the big bucks.
I’ve enjoyed the way “period pieces” are used for Oscar bait now. It’s no longer Gilded Age fancy wardrobe no. Now we’re in 1999 Japan and Phoenix Arizona. Um, sure. Benny Safdie, going solo here, shoots the movie like one of those Tae Bo videos you’d watch on VHS. We’re in grainy fuzzyville, which pulls double duty of time travel and headspace manipulation. If we’re supposed to be around Mark Kerr, might as well have a messed up head from either flying knees or opioids. The Smashing Machine plays this mostly like the sports biopic you expect it to be, with all the familiar beats you’d expect. Save one, the character arc of our hero.
Enter Dwayne Johnson. There were always signs The Rock had a performance like this in him, showing out even in Michael Bay shenanigans. Johnson uses that putty makeup to become Mark Kerr. The actor plays the MMA fighter like a man constantly fighting with himself, using the ring to let out his worst feelings so he can bury them by the time he goes back out into the real world. You feel that frustration and rage tempt to bubble to the surface more than once, especially when the drugs cloud Kerr’s ability to reason. Underneath all that though is a man afraid to reckon with failures. Fear, anger, dopiness, sweetness, lots of emotions at play. The Rock gives us all versions of Kerr, wrapped up in his burly tender package. Him and Emily Blunt are the core of the movie, and nail the big sequences that a less movie would have made into a lame melodrama. Though Emily, stop playing “the wife” please. You’re great on your own.
As our first acting jump into the Oscar Race, The Smashing Machine goes down pretty smoothly. After the giant meal of One Battle After Another, this is a nice Safdie amuse bouche before we get into bigger, richer fare. And, Dwayne, keep taking roles like this! You nailed this one, and I have hopes you and Dave Bautista can take that wrastlin rivalry into the acting arena for king of the big screen!