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In 2019, Dwayne, “The Rock,” Johnson approached actor-director-writer Benny Safdie (of Safdie brothers fame) with John Hyam’s 2002 documentary “The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr,” with the hopes of turning it into a feature film. The documentary told the story of Kerr’s brief stint as an Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter, as well as his troubled marriage to his wife, Dawn Kerr. At the time, Safdie was preoccupied with his and his brother’s smash-hit film, “Uncut Gems,” so the project was quiet for a few years. Then, in May 2023, the project was filmed and was finally released on Oct. 3, 2025. The film is part shot-for-shot live-action recreation of the documentary and part additional dramatic, yet true, cinematics.
Safdie is obviously obsessed with fighting movies. He cited “Requiem for a Heavyweight”, “Fat City,” “The Harder They Fall,” “Rocky” and “Rocky III” as his main inspirations for his film. His evident love for the cinematic past of combat cinema doesn’t override his remarkably innovative visual ability, as the film still feels new and fresh. The film is his fifth feature, but his first solo project without his brother, Josh Safdie. The duo made their debut back in 2009 with the father-son dramedy “Daddy Longlegs,” and broke out a decade later with the gripping Adam Sandler-starring thriller, “Uncut Gems.”
Fight movies, like “The Smashing Machine,” usually feature a self-serious romantic B-plot and a sweeping, high-stakes fighting A-plot, and “The Smashing Machine” is no different. Where the film differentiates itself is in its approach to shooting these two plots. The emotional, troubled marital plot surrounding Mark Ker (Dwayne Johnson) and Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt) is shot like a prototypical fight scene; shaky, close-up, claustrophobic handheld shots with little context or exterior content. Safdie flips this for the fighting scenes, which he shoots always outside the ring, almost like an actual broadcast. The camera never sits outside the ring, but rather breathlessly floats on the exterior. This visual language emphasizes a key part of Kerr’s life: that all of his central tension came from his home life – his unsettled marriage and opioid addiction, rather than his in-the-ring dramatics. This is just one of the bold, unsafe directorial decisions that Safdie makes throughout the film, which accentuates the sincere and sensitive yet physical narrative.
This film is Dwayne Johnson’s first bid into dramatic, serious acting. Although he’s had a financially lucrative Hollywood career, starring in movies like “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” “Black Adam,” voice acting in the “Moana” films, starring in a few high-budget Netflix projects, as well as several of the “The Fast and the Furious” movies, he’s never dipped his toes into an Oscar-contending theatrical role. In all of his other performances, he’s never really played an actual character, but somewhat altered versions of himself. It has never felt like he was really acting, merely being a celebrity draw for a movie to sell more tickets. That being said, he’s simply sensational in “The Smashing Machine,” perfectly displaying the fragile masculinity, awkward, massive size, and quiet yet sincere emotional depth that the character holds. Many of the emotionally impactful moments Kerr goes through are even more moving to the viewer because of his massive, muscular size. It’s hard not to be impacted by seeing this tank of a man go through uncharacteristically emotional moments.
Opposite to Johnson, Blunt struggles in her leading actress position. It’s not her fault that the character isn’t fully realized and underwritten, but she makes some choices that only make the characterization worse. None of her big emotional outbursts are very affecting, simply because we don’t spend that much time with the character on her lonesome, she’s always with Mark. She’s treated like an accessory to Mark, not her own character. She has no middle ground; she’s either on full volume, screaming, and crying with maximum effort, or quiet and almost transparent, fading into the background. There’s a lack of neutrality that makes her feel like a fictional character, not a real person, even though Dawn Staples exists.
Unfortunately, the film can feel shallow in its exploration of fragile masculinity and the complexities of opposing personalities in love. It fails to crack the surface of any of its large number of interesting ideas. The project has enormous amounts of potential, given its fascinating source material, an immensely talented cast and crew and a beautiful soundtrack and cinematography. However, it doesn’t fully live up to this potential. The script is (nontypically of Safdie) underwritten, and the story is fairly surface-level. Although some of the acting is tremendous, the photography is stunning and the ideas are exceedingly compelling, the project as a whole falls short of its potential.
