RATING
Director(s): Benny Safdie
Country: United States
Author: Benny Safdie
Actor(s): Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader
Written by Tom Augustine
There’s a risk built into the very nature of the sports film, and it’s why so few of them ultimately stand above the pack. That risk is convention — there is a narrative that’s inherent to any sport, and that is that someone always wins and someone else loses. Conventions are there to be flouted, sure, but there’s little denying that feeling of deflation when a film steers away from what we expect, especially within this specific subgenre. Would Warrior or Creed or Miracle or Moneyball have felt so satisfying if their teams or players hadn’t made the final round, had placed respectfully somewhere in the quarter finals? Unlikely. This doesn’t mean they have to win, mind: a lot of the really great sports movies are about what happens when their protagonists lose — think Rocky, Raging Bull, Bring it On — but there is a necessary build up that is required to reach that place, one that roughly aligns with the three-act structure, the climax being the final round of whatever sport is being played. The Safdie Brothers — Benny and Josh — are certainly not known for their conventionality; their careers blossomed after years of making microbudget New York films featuring unknowns and non-actors. The films that catapulted them to true stardom, Good Time and Uncut Gems, made such an impact for their gritty, unfiltered intensity, exhilarating works in their capacity to stress viewers the fuck out. It’s fascinating that, since their highly publicised (and rumoured to be contentious) split, both brothers are entering this Oscar season with solo projects centred around sports — Benny with The Smashing Machine and Josh with the Timothée Chalamet-starring Marty Supreme, one of the last big question marks on the award season scoreboard this year. Benny, in his film, seems hellbent on defying and flouting the convention of the sports movie in his telling of the story of MMA legend Mark Kerr. He’s only partially successful, resulting in a strangely muted film that lacks the thrilling high-wire daring of his collaborations with his brother, but also fails to find another intriguing key to replace it.
The most attention-grabbing element of The Smashing Machine is the presence of its star, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, in a role deservedly generating Oscar buzz. The last time Johnson wasn’t coasting on his easy charisma through big-budget hamfests was way back in 2013, when he gave a legitimately excellent performance in Michael Bay’s misunderstood Pain and Gain. Those who followed the star’s career between his wrestling days and his era of image-controlled megastardom will know the actor has always had strong dramatic chops, though he has (seemingly by choice) had few outlets to wield them. This talent was most apparent in Richard Kelly’s cult-classic Southland Tales, which played on the Rock’s persona to gleefully bizarre ends; while small supporting roles in otherwise forgettable trash like Be Cool demonstrated an actor hungry to learn and improve. Around the time Johnson landed in the Fast and Furious ensemble, injecting fresh energy into the series as the antagonist of that series’ highpoint Fast Five, the larger-than-life external persona of who the Rock is — hyper-muscular, entrepreneurial, slickly charming — led to a career of performances that were jammed in second gear, star vehicles where the focus was on getting the Rock in front of the largest audience possible, not necessarily asking him to act. That’s what makes The Smashing Machine such an intriguing project — the Rock is getting older, and appears to be interested in flexing muscles that haven’t been worked out in quite some time. The Safdies have been known to draw fantastic work from unexpected places, most notably in Adam Sandler’s all-time performance in Uncut Gems, but also in Robert Pattinson’s legitimising work in Good Time. It helps that Kerr’s story is not totally unlike Johnson’s, in that both came from wrestling backgrounds to find stardom in new fields. It allows Johnson to utilise that famous physique in a new, nuanced way, which proves to be The Smashing Machine’s most rewarding aspect.
The solo effort from director Benny Safdie post-split from the Safdie Brothers duo, The Smashing Machine is most notable for the transformative lead performance of Dwayne Johnson, doing very fine work as MMA legend Mark Kerr. It’s a film that dares to flout the tried-and-true conventions of the sports drama, but largely fails to find a pulse outside of its fascinating depiction of the toxic relationship between Kerr and his partner Dawn (Emily Blunt).
Johnson’s Kerr is a vicious fighter in the octagon, enough so that he became one of the most familiar faces of the then-burgeoning sport. Outside the octagon, though, he’s a big softie — he’s emotionally vulnerable, image-conscious, prone to crying. One of the most endearing aspects of the film’s script, also written by Safdie, is the childlike quality Kerr demonstrates, particularly in his on-again-off-again relationship with partner Dawn (Emily Blunt). He regularly refers to certain experiences and medications upsetting his ‘tummy’, and speaks at an unexpectedly high pitch, allowing for Dawn to initially take on something of a mothering role in their relationship. Dawn, though, has her own problems: with substances, for one, but also with codependence, and it becomes apparent early on that theirs is a deeply toxic relationship, one whose peaks and valleys form the dramatic heart of The Smashing Machine. Blunt, who hasn’t really clicked in a role for me since the double-whammy of Edge of Tomorrow and Sicario some ten years previous, is superb here — the pair’s relationship is deeply strange and yet lived-in. There appears to be little sexual attraction between the two, but deep wells of fear and resentment about how much the other might adapt to survive without them. As Kerr’s struggles with addiction and with the pain of losing fights mount, we come to understand that the root of these snags is their very relationship. Blunt’s performance here is vivid and refreshingly complex for the ‘wife of the star’ part — she’s thorny, often unlikeable, and frequently cruel to Mark, knowing just how to push his buttons to ensure he returns to her arms against his own best interests. The occasional times when Safdie chooses to refocus the film on Dawn are valuable for the attention placed on a part of the story that other films might ignore entirely, or simply utilise to create a villain in the narrative. Blunt’s performance also knows when to cede the stage to Johnson, who is utterly magnetic here under thick layers of makeup, generating a welcome extratextual parallel to the story of Kerr’s fall and comeback, as we see a movie star find a new groove before our eyes.
Those performances aside, The Smashing Machine is a film largely disinterested in bombast, often deliberately shying away from climactic sequences other films would build their structures around. It’s a valiant effort to find new shades to the sports biopic, and there’s plenty of tension to be drawn out of where Kerr and Dawn’s story will end up — but by the time the film reaches its end it’s hard to deny that slight feeling of deflation. Safdie is ultimately interested in Kerr as a figure of failure and acceptance, which is fine, but despite some excellent, intricate period aesthetic, the film never really transitions from a simmer to a boil. It’s a film that aims for the compelling blend of grit and glamour that David O. Russell’s The Fighter landed on in the 2000s, but The Smashing Machine ultimately feels too refined, too tasteful, to really build that same emotional resonance so necessary to a story like this. It’s strange to use those terms for a filmmaker whose daring led to one of the great masterpieces of the modern era, Uncut Gems, but The Smashing Machine feels built to bear a great performance to the fore, rather than to be an exceptional film in itself. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — it’s a wonderful experience to see a liberated Johnson (and, honestly, Blunt) really chowing down on roles of true depth — but it halts The Smashing Machine, like its subject, short of greatness.
The Smashing Machine is in cinemas now.