What if Raging Bull, but Jake LaMotta was a mild-mannered, genuinely sweet guy? That’s the gist of The Smashing Machine, which debuts in Prague cinemas this weekend after premiering at the Venice International Film Festival and opening stateside last month. This MMA biopic features a career-best performance from Dwayne Johnson as wrestler Mark Kerr, and some appealing 90s era filmmaking, but plays out largely flat and strangely low-energy despite some occasional histrionics and brutal fight scenes.
Mark Kerr was a champion collegiate wrestler who turned to mixed martial arts after graduating as a way to make money while training for Olympic and World Championship bids. He found success in the early days of the UFC, as well as Brazil’s Vale Tudo and Japan’s Pride organizations, when MMA was meeting controversy for the lack of regulation and bloody fights, becoming one of the popular figures in what has become the world’s biggest combat sport.
In The Smashing Machine, outside of some early montages and an epilogue featuring the real-life Kerr, writer-director Benny Safdie takes a fly-on-the-wall approach to three years of Kerr’s MMA career. From 1997-2000, Kerr dealt with serious substance abuse issues and an unhealthy relationship with girlfriend Dawn Staples as he competed in Pride and confronted his own competitive mortality on the mat.
Safdie follows Kerr through intimate moments with Dawn, on trips to the doctor and to the gym, at press conferences for Pride, and ultimately into the ring. At some point, we come to terms with the fact that there will be no active storyline for us to get invested in, or outcome to root for: Safdie is not interested in telling a compelling narrative, but rather paint a picture of Kerr that gives us the most honest impression of this man possible.
This would have made for material for a documentary. And it was: John Hyams’ 2002 documentary The Smashing Machine, which covered the exact same timeframe. This fictionalized rendition includes scenes lifted straight from the earlier documentary, and only tangentially related to the main story, like when Kerr explains MMA to a middle-aged woman in a doctor’s office. What’s the point in re-creating this innocuous moment? Because it happened.
As played by Johnson (amusingly portraying a character 25 years his junior), Kerr is the nicest guy you would ever want to meet, and the exact opposite of his (and Johnson’s) hulking physique: humble, kind, soft-spoken, and without an angry bone in his body. Sure, he’s addicted to opioids, but he’ll get better, and he’ll make it up to his fans and the sport as a whole.
Johnson is playing against type, ironically, as this real-life character is one of the closest physical specimens that the actor and wrestler would be able to portray. But it’s transformative work: the actor so subtly disappears into this gentle giant that we no longer question the age difference or other preconceptions that The Rock brings to the table. He genuinely is Kerr, as much as Kerr was himself in the documentary; only in later scenes, when Kerr changes his look, do we remember the actor within.
Dawn is played by Emily Blunt, and it’s her theatrics that give The Smashing Machine a level of much-needed drama. Dawn’s negative influence on Mark was hinted at in the documentary, but it’s on full display here in increasingly aggravating scenes that bring the film close to Raging Bull territory. But Johnson’s Kerr confronts her with care instead of anger, and de-escalates the tension for the audience if not for himself. Our heart sinks a little reading a final end-crawl note.
Real-life MMA star Ryan Bader almost steals the film away from the stars as Mark Coleman, Kerr’s longtime friend, coach, and competitor. There’s a tenderness to Bader’s performance that echoes Johnson’s and perhaps rings more true, and we invest far more in the relationship between Kerr and Coleman than between Mark and Dawn. Coleman is the only other character in the film to get his own small storyline, and Bader earns the screen time.
But coming from Safdie, who co-directed the nerve-wrackingly intense Good Time and Uncut Gems with his brother Josh, there’s a lethargic, listless feel to The Smashing Machine that never invites us to invest in its story. This is a fine recreation of this period in Kerr’s life, brought to life through some evocative cinematography from Maceo Bishop and deeply-felt performances, but it keeps a distance from the audience when it should be getting us riled up. One cannot deny the care and craft with which it has been created, but appreciation for The Smashing Machine will be similarly muted.
