NEW YORK (OSV News) — For better or worse, the sports biopic “The Smashing Machine” (A24) registers as a highly realistic film. With both a real-life figure as its focus and a documentary as its source material, that may be unsurprising. But the low-key, unsensational approach adopted by writer-director Benny Safdie ultimately produces varied results.
Dwayne Johnson in the lead role brings intensity to his portrayal of Mark Kerr, a wrestler who, in the late 1990s, became a pioneering celebrity in the world of mixed martial arts.
As he battles an addiction to pain killers and adjusts to his first loss in the ring, Kerr also experiences ups and downs in his relationship with his emotionally fragile live-in girlfriend Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt). The support he receives from his best pal and fellow MMA trailblazer Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader), by contrast, is unwavering.
Fans of Kerr’s sport will no doubt relish the numerous bone-crunching confrontations Safdie recreates in his dramatization of John Hyams’ 2002 profile of the fighter. Others may find these depictions of mutually inflicted pain — achieved via such moves as repeated close-contact knee blows to a downed opponent’s head — all-too-authentic.
Those in the audience less-than-invested in such brawling, moreover, will be left questioning the dramatic value of other sequences devoted to domestic life in which Kerr and Staples bicker over, among other things, whether to let their pet cat sit on the living-room sofa. They also quarrel over the proper pruning of a poolside cactus plant.
Later arguments devolve into heated exchanges of vulgarity. Together with the tough dustups, these F-bomb dropping contests preclude endorsement for any but grown viewers.
The shade-throwing looks Staples occasionally draws from Coleman and Kerr’s trainer, Bas Rutten (playing himself), evoke the kind of glances Paul, George or Ringo may once have shot at Yoko Ono. Those around Kerr clearly regard the needy lady as a hindrance to his career.
Safdie’s commitment to the facts helps him avoid a formulaic ending to Kerr’s tale. Yet, although generosity is inherent in the outlook Kerr adopts toward his professional fate, and moviegoers will already have cheered him on in his efforts to get clean, mere amiability does not seem a sufficient justification for this detailed, sometimes quotidian, retrospective.
The film contains harsh physical violence with minimal gore, drug use, cohabitation, a suicide theme, at least one instance of profanity, several milder oaths, pervasive rough language and considerable crude and crass talk. The OSV News classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
John Mulderig is media reviewer for OSV News. Follow him on X @JohnMulderig1.
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