"The Smashing Machine:" an Undeniable Package, but the Same Old Story

[the following review is spoiler-free]

One of the most essential and timeless cinematic sounds is the punch. The muffled crackle of crushed bone or the exaggerated smack of a boxing glove, the drama of a big hit plays out on a sonic stage. In the opening moments of The Smashing Machine, when Mark Kerr viciously beats down his opponent in the ring, there’s nothing more than a dull thud. There’s a brutality in the way the sounds of the fight are snuffed out in the cavern of the theatre. There’s a raw brutality to everything onscreen courtesy of director Benny Safdie, whose career of experiments in gritty realism culminates in the bleakness of The Smashing Machine, one of 2025's most highly anticipated films.

Safdie’s sports film spends its runtime proving that it's anything but. There are hardly any moments you could consider big, just long, thin strands of frayed story that Safdie is fascinated in exploring. Between the shaky camera, the intentional dryness, and the against type performances, Smashing Machine proves that it is certainly no Miracle on Ice. And while Smashing Machine has many moments of fantastic dramatic grit, its narrative is lacking in dramatic heft. For all the dedication to its documentarian lens, Smashing Machine’s own style ends up getting in the way of a compelling narrative. Perhaps it could’ve taken a lesson or two from Miracle.

The Smashing Machine is the true story of MMA legend Mark Kerr; his struggles, his triumphs, and his resilience through his career. In typical sports film fashion, the plot is built around the gradual lead up to a career defining, risk-it-all moment. However, Safdie recognizes the genre that he’s in, and he consciously sidesteps around its common tropes. The fight scenes that most films would be built around are almost devoid of emotion. The real heart pounding moments are outside of the ring, but that’s not to say the scenes of competition are ineffective. The film likes to shuffle its own pathos, sprinkling fights across Kerr’s experience in a way that doesn’t harm the action, but dilutes it, and allows it to circulate through the various pathways of the narrative. In its best moments, this approach refracts the image of the athlete, leaving shreds of performance to feebly obscure bitter truths.

“Just treat me like a man” Kerr mumbles after one of his many domestic meltdowns, all out of fight but still trying to emerge as the winner. Stifled violence and anger unpredictably rise and fall throughout the plot, and whether the scene in question has gloves on or off is irrelevant.

While Safdie’s leveling of the sports genre is interesting, it ends up narratively crippling the film. The efforts to sustain realism place emphasis on drawn-out moments of textured mundanity and essentially abandon dramatic swings. The plot itself is naturally built around drama, consciously or not. Kerr’s struggle with addiction, domestic disputes, and the central “be the champion” narrative are all reliable cruxes of storytelling that Smashing Machine is built around. Yet, it seems to act as though it isn’t.

It stylistically resists the emotional swings that accompany its own narrative for the sake of realism. It expects its realism to create an equalizing truth, one that neutralizes manipulative emotional pulls into a directionless wash of pathos. But instead, it develops a narrative that quivers around a neutral ground. Realism is employed for the sake of realism, but it doesn’t aid the story. Safdie seems hesitant to give his drama any special punch as it may risk breaking the spell of authenticity. Stylistically, the film eclipses its narrative, it's so standard that it ends up flattening the overall experience. It struggles to make meaningful dramatic decisions, and the film’s clichés end up being clunky and obvious.

Still, the commitment is there. Safdie’s style is strong, and the soap opera sheen of the cinematography is too bold to merely write off. And that’s without mentioning the dedicated performances from the cast. The supporting cast adapts well to Safdie’s camera, their spontaneity and stilted dialogue feeling at home in the stripped back world of the film. Emily Blunt has a few great moments, but none where she can really shine. Her character is a little too hammy and is often relegated to a fairly one-note foil for Dwayne Johnson’s Kerr. In fact, everything is built around Johnson’s Kerr, especially the press leading up to the film’s release.

From the moment Johnson’s involvement in the film was announced, it became the most important movie in his career thus far. This was his chance to rise past the one-note, jungle explorer, smartass, stereotype he’s been playing for the last several years and play a role that’s a true dramatic challenge. And did he rise to the challenge? Sure.

The Rock is very good as Mark Kerr, occasionally great. When he employs his soft-spoken charismatic side, he shines. It’s hokey in the best way, playing into the character’s performance that dictates his life in and out of the ring. It’s so calculated to be perfectly sunny that it directly exposes the rumbling storm clouds beneath. When the veneer breaks, he transforms into an unpredictable, violent mess. Johnson does a great job balancing these two extremes, but the neutral ground in the middle remains unexplored.

The performance is too calculated to be “big” before it can begin to be “real”. That’s without mentioning the makeup. Which – while impressive in transforming his face – freezes the Rock’s expressive features in a static portrait where he maybe moves his eyebrows twice in 123 minutes. So, while it’s a good performance for a standard drama, it’s far from a great Rock performance. I think that the Rock is a great actor, charismatic and expressive, aware of his strengths and great at using them. He’s got great humour and an undeniable physical presence, and Smashing Machine utilizes a select few pieces of Johnson’s skillset. The looming expectations of critical acclaim limit Johnson’s performance. He doesn’t get to sharpen the aspects of his star persona that are so magnetic, he instead inhabits a “new” Rock, but one that’s a lot less interesting than the one that he’s been building up since his days in the WWE.

The Smashing Machine is a focused but flawed film. It succeeds in creating a rich and textured atmosphere, uncomfortable and provocative yet never uninteresting. The palette of influences – Aronofsky, Baker, De Sica – are woven into the style with reverence, yet it never compromises its own vision. Under this brutal and unflinching lens, Smashing Machine exposes the flawed and tender hearts of its cast. But the foundation is shaky. Meandering moments and an aversion to sentiment hurt the film and turn potentially impactful moments into dry stretches of narrative slumps. The commitment to realism mutes a potentially fiery story of human drama into barely a simmer. The realism and the narrative mix like oil and water, both competent in their own right, but their fight for dominance over the film hurts the experience. It may be real, and it may be gritty, but what’s it worth when it isn’t interesting?