Director: Benny Safdie
Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader
Dramatising the career of influential wrestler Mark Kerr from John Hyams’ similarly-titled 2002 documentary, Benny Safdie may just have been upstaged by his producer and lead actor, Dwayne Johnson. Johnson’s move here into Serious Acting – following a career thus far typified by brash blockbuster fluff – has garnered the film all kinds of attention. For everyone joking about ‘The Rock’ getting an Oscar nomination next year there are as many eager for it. And, watching him in action, it’s not the most ludicrous notion. Johnson’s commitment to the part helps sell a mostly boilerplate sports drama, one that’s otherwise nowhere near as incendiary as Safdie’s prior work with his bro.
Covering the three years that Kerr spent fighting mostly in Japan’s PRIDE Fighting Championships (a kind of cross-Pacific contemporary to the then-emerging UFC), the man we meet at the film’s opening has an almost childlike naivety about him. A journalist quizzes Kerr (Johnson) on what it would feel like to lose an upcoming fight and the question completely baffles him; he’s never lost a fight before and can’t imagine what that might mean. Even if you don’t know the trajectory of Kerr’s career at this time, anyone with even a basic understanding of narrative filmmaking can guess that he’s about to find out.
Rather than fixate solely on a hagiographic retelling of Kerr’s victories, Safdie studies a period of struggle. When his first loss comes, Kerr is devastated and it leads to a number of confrontations with his girlfriend, Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt). A spell in rehab to kick an opiate addiction refocuses Kerr, but Dawn quickly comes to miss playing nursemaid to him and reproaches the new sense of distance between them. The Smashing Machine flits fairly evenly between bouts in the ring and tête a tetes at home, with the odd training montage thrown in to keep the purists happy.
More-so than the hair and make-up prosthetics adorned to Johnson to make him look the part, it’s striking to see him performing in this particular register. Kerr is evoked to be a kind, soft-spoken and gentle man (when he’s not ramming his mega-fists into jaws or doors), and it does genuinely feel like an unseen facet to the actor’s range, more commonly restricted to family friendly charisma or machismo with a shit-eating grin. The Smashing Machine is ultimately concerned with the changing ways Kerr is able to deal with set-backs or defeats. A titan learning to live life among the humans.
Fittingly for one half of the Safdies, it also charts a surprisingly sweet and healthy bromance between Kerr and fellow fighter Mark Coleman (real UFC star Ryan Bader). For much of the first half of the film Coleman acts as Kerr’s coach, before stepping back to focus on his own career rebirth. The Smashing Machine coyly sets up an expectation that the two are destined to meet in the ring, amping up the dramatic potential of watching these besties reluctantly pound the living shit out of one another. But Safdie proves a greater stickler than most for the ‘true’ parts of his True Story. One might say that The Smashing Machine dodges a few expectations and lands a canny southpaw or two… but that also gives the impression that this is a more interesting film to watch than it sadly is.
The unsexy truth is that, doggedly faithful as it may be, The Smashing Machine is a persistently pedestrian watch. Johnson and Blunt go toe-to-toe in a number of overlong domestics that prove decent showcases for the both of them, but the root arguments themselves are wearingly trivial. When they’re not at one another’s throats, leisurely visits to theme parks feel ambling as opposed to cute. Safdie is perfectly happy to leave his film in neutral and let it roll passed the milestones gently. It’s a far cry from the run’n’gun energy of works like Heaven Knows What or Good Time.
We shouldn’t expect the same thing everytime from a filmmaker, and testing new waters often enlivens creativity. But the opposite appears to be the case here. Safdie has crafted – with love and attention – an almost platonic ideal of a boring sports biopic. Granted there are positives here worth cheering, particularly the overarching displays of friendship and caring between men in an arena geared explicitly toward toxic masculinity. Ultra-massive big boys cry, too, ya’know.
Far more interesting than the direction, subject matter or even Johnson’s performance is the score for the film from Caribbean-Belgian experimental jazz musician Nala Sinephro, who intersperses the movie’s soft rock radio source selections with some unusual and exciting ideas for this kind of by-the-numbers biographical sports drama. Be it percussive stutters underpinning a fight or a brief on-screen cameo at her harp, Sinephro’s efforts are the strongest to pitch The Smashing Machine out of the ordinary and certainly strong enough to send this viewer in pursuit of her efforts elsewhere. There are Coltrane-quality sax laments here that suit the images surprisingly well, and kudos to Safdie for seeing the possibility.
Elsewhere and in spite of some admirable PSAs for men’s health, The Smashing Machine is just lacking something. The positives can’t quite collectively outshine the sense that this is an Oscar-baiting prestige picture designed first and foremost to market Dwayne Johnson’s new career ambitions and A24’s potential dominance come Awards Season. I don’t believe that was the intention at the outset, but it’s hard to shake while sitting through so many dramatically dry scenes. Not quite a knockout.
The Lost Highway Hotel 