Gotta say, I wasn’t predicting this one to be such a pitiful commercial bomb.
The Smashing Machine comes to us from Benny Safdie, one of the two brothers who previously brought us Uncut Gems. Even at the time, I knew that movie was overrated trash, yet everyone continues to talk about it in glowing terms.
And then there’s producer/star Dwayne Johnson. For the past few years, various talking heads have bemoaned the death of the movie star, and Johnson has been my counter-argument. The man is not an actor, he’s a brand. He looks the same and acts the same in pretty much every movie he’s made over the past couple decades. Every one of his characters is some minor variation of his established persona. And right when it looks like the act is getting old and his box office returns start dipping, he finally decides to try being an actor and playing a markedly different character.
On paper, The Smashing Machine looks like it was ideally placed to give the people what they want: More of Safdie giving new life to a flagging star’s career by directing him in a transformational starring role for a gritty awards-bait drama. And the film tanked hard. Maybe the moviegoing public finally turned on them both hard enough that this is too little and too late. Or maybe there’s something else going on. Let’s see if we can find out.
Johnson plays Mark Kerr, primarily known as a founding figure in the world of MMA. The film opens in 1997, with Kerr’s successful and groundbreaking run in the World Vale Tudo Championship 3 at Brazil. The film ends in 2000, with the end of Kerr’s run at the Pride Grand Prix in Japan. In between, the action mostly centers around Kerr’s ongoing struggle with opiate addiction and his tumultuous relationship with Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt).
The film’s other central relationship is between Kerr and Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader), another foundational pioneer in MMA. Kerr and Coleman go through a lot together as friends, colleagues, training partners, surrogate family, and rival fighters. It’s a complex and compelling friendship to watch. Trouble is, this storyline keeps building up to a climax that never happens (because, in fact, the teased climax never actually happened), and thus it never develops into a coherent point.
The Dawn/Kerr relationship is even worse. Don’t get me wrong, Johnson and Blunt are doing the best with what they’ve got, but it isn’t enough. The big problem here is that the filmmakers totally fail to sell Kerr and Dawn as a happy and healthy couple. The two of them are always in some degree of argument, even at their happiest. Granted, some of that might have to do with Kerr himself and his compulsive need to fight all the time, but the film never goes there. All we see are two people so unhappy around each other, so incapable of cohabitating peacefully, there’s no chance whatsoever that this relationship will work out. In turn, this means we have no reason whatsoever to emotionally invest.
The crowning failure comes when Dawn attempts suicide (CONTENT WARNING). Yes, there comes a point late in the movie when Dawn and Kerr are having yet another argument and Dawn tries to kill herself. And my only reaction was disbelief. This guy is not worth it. This relationship is not worth it. And when the filmmakers fall so terribly short of selling such a pivotal character moment, that is critical mission failure.
The film was made and marketed as a dramatization of Mark Kerr’s rise and fall as an MMA fighter. Unfortunately, we get huge swaths of the film without any fight scenes. Kerr loses a match roughly half an hour in, and he spends pretty much the entire second act getting over that loss. He spends half the movie moping around, arguing with his girlfriend, sobering up from his painkiller addiction. It’s even less interesting than I’m making it sound.
The big problem with the drug addiction angle is that all the most important beats happen early and offscreen. Kerr overdoses, and we hear about it secondhand when Dawn is calling Coleman for help. Kerr goes to rehab, and we don’t see him again until he’s out of rehab two minutes later. He’s never the least bit tempted to relapse, but he does complain to Dawn about how inconsiderate she is, using painkillers in front of him and going out drinking with her friends. There is one moment when Kerr is perfectly fine administering opiates to someone else, but he keeps insisting the entire time that he’s not using and he’s clear to make sure this is a one-time thing.
Are the fighting scenes any good, at least? Kinda, but they’re too few and too brief. Though it is rather notable that the fights are presented with a loose and aggressive jazz score, that’s a clever idea and it works surprisingly well. I might further note that Kerr and his worthy competitors are taking part in a new sport where the rules are inconsistently enforced because they’re constantly changing on the fly. I might further add that Kerr is competing in foreign countries, working with officials and administrators who don’t speak English. We get glimpses of the dramatic conflict and tension that could be part of such a setup, but the film doesn’t do nearly enough.
The problem I keep running into with this movie is that the film sprawls out into all these different directions, but can’t commit to any one direction or theme. The end result is a half-baked film without a clear takeaway or fully-developed arc. To wit: Kerr loses a match early on and it breaks him so badly that it pretty much grinds the whole movie to a stop. Then he loses another match later on and he seems okay with it. On paper, that sounds like character development. In practice, there’s no firm sense of what changed or what Kerr learned in the interim. So it doesn’t work.
The Smashing Machine evens out to a textbook case of awards-bait cinema. It delivers a fantastic lead performance and accomplishes nothing else. The filmmakers delivered a product that’s competent and predictable, without excelling or innovating in any way. It’s a film made and marketed on potential without the commitment to fully realize that potential. A film made to last in the public memory right up until the Oscars ceremony and not a day longer.
I get the strong impression that the Safdie Brothers should reunite immediately. Not that I was ever a fan of their previous works, but at least Good Time and Uncut Gems were brash and memorable films that took bold swings. This is just white noise.
With all that said, I do respect Johnson for going outside his comfort zone and disappearing into a character for once. Damn shame we’re probably not getting that lucky again anytime soon.