In Benny Sadfie’s anti-sports biopic The Smashing Machine, Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) is always fighting, whether he’s inside the ring or outside it. Inside, the battle is simpler to define. The one-on-one combats are rough and bloody, knees jamming into heads and fists smushing into faces; participants often walk away with concussions or wounds that require stitches. And yet, there’s a peculiar grace to them, the length and intensity of the fights climbing to an almost gladiatorial plain. Outside, the battles rarely lead to physical wounds, but they’re far messier, more complicated. Because Mark is always butting against something: his often volatile relationship with his girlfriend, Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt), his dependence on opiates to subdue the pain, the incomprehensible concept of loss.
Set largely between 1997 and 2000, The Smashing Machine sees the already edgy Kerr begin to unravel after the undefeated champion finally faces the latter. He joins a Japanese mixed martial arts tournament called Pride in 1999, and his loss his shocking. Sadfie, who wrote, directed, edited, and co-produced the film, isn’t particularly interested in the intricacies of the sport beyond its absurd contradictions (a conference at Pride reveals that it is now considered an illegal move to knee an opponent in the head while they are on the ground, but kicking them in the face while they are standing up is perfectly acceptable). The fights serve as mere markers in Kerr’s life, stepping stones to get from one stage to the next.
What Sadfie is interested in, however, is the dichotomy between Kerr’s brutal career and his gentle personality. Outside of the ring, he’s often soft-spoken, docile, expresses value in professional relationships and friendships, and dotes on Dawn. He asks the people sitting next to him on a flight to please open the window shade so he can watch the sunset, and picks out a scarf for Dawn in Japan because “she likes colors.” But at times, those two sides collide, and he shouts, and he threatens, and he tears through doors like they’re cardboard.
It’s a role that’s well-suited to Johnson, a former fighter who, in his years as an actor, has maintained an imposing, god-like physique that doesn’t suggest the affable, down-to-earth personality he presents off-screen. He’s carved a comfortable lane for himself— vacillating between comedic family fare and action movies that are rarely gruesome enough to graduate beyond a PG-13 rating— which makes not only the carefully calibrated physical transformation but also the heavier subject matter (leaning far more toward drama than action) and the violent mood swings he has to embody as Kerr such a surprising turn for him. He’s up for the challenge, if he isn’t always wholly adept at playing big emotions that believably emanate from deep within him. But you can tell that he is internalizing everything all the same, in his careful, intentional manner of speaking. Blunt’s role allows her to make more subtle choices: the mounting edge in her voice as her supportive gestures toward Mark are continually spurned, a tear glistening on her cheek that no one else can see. Together, they’re well-matched sparring partners, the outcome of every encounter as unpredictable as a match.
Really, that’s where The Smashing Machine turns explosive. Those grasping for more details about Kerr— a pioneer in UFC fighting whose name now often goes unspoken— ought to look to the 2002 HBO documentary of the same name, although Sadfie’s film does utilize real-life fighters in the cast, most notably Ryan Bader, who plays Kerr’s friend and fellow fighter Mark Coleman in his first acting role. Outside of some specific details, Kerr could almost serve as a stand-in for anyone here. And those yearning for a conventional sports movie that revels in the match, where the stakes feel impossibly high, where the protagonist ends up experiencing either a professional victory or a personal one— well, there are a lot of those already. There is a reason why those genre conventions are a tried and true success, but if The Smashing Machine feels dissatisfying, it isn’t because it begins with Kerr on top of the world and ends on a downbeat. In fact, those scenes are among the most effective in the movie, the camera following the undulating muscles on Kerr’s unfathomably wide back on the unfathomably long and lonely walk from the ring back to the locker room. It’s more that the film talks about Kerr’s problems more than it actually shows them, like the extensiveness of his opiate addiction, or the root of his and Dawn’s issues; there’s a scene following a particularly nuclear domestic squabble late in the film in which a desperate Dawn veers in a shocking direction that the film hitherto never gestures toward. The script never affords us the opportunity to really get a handle on what her deal is.
Still, there’s something beguiling about The Smashing Machine even when it feels a little empty and confused, Maceo Bishop’s cinematography throwing dirt and grit on a movie that could have easily opted for award season gleam, Nala Sinepro’s offbeat jazz score marching to the movie’s unconventional beat. Mostly, it’s just nice to see a movie like this play with expectations, and zag when you think it’s going to zig; let’s be real, Benny Sadfie was never going to make a “normal” sports movie. And mostly, it’s nice to see Johnson breaking free from the routine franchise fare he’s tied himself to, even if it’s only as fleeting as Kerr’s time at the top.
The Smashing Machine had its world premiere in competition at the 2025 Venice Film Festival. Runtime: 123 minutes. Rated R.
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