Director: Benny Safdie
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader, Bas Rutten, Oleksandr Usyk
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 123 mins

The Smashing Machine is a biographical sports drama directed by Benny Safdie, his first time behind the camera without his brother Josh – the duo received acclaim for their collaborations with films such as Heaven Knows What, Good Time and Uncut Gems. Dwayne Johnson stars as former amateur wrestler and MMA fighter Mark Kerr, with the film taking place between 1997 and 2000. At the start, he’s yet to lose a match and is being coached by fellow MMA fighter and best friend Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader) while stumbling in and out of drug use before competing against the fearsome Igor Vovchanchyn (Oleksandry Usyk). He also has a complicated relationship with his girlfriend, Dawn (Emily Blunt).

The Smashing Machine is a fascinating sports biopic with some terrific performances, and hats off to Safdie for deviating from the conventional biopic formula. The film has a cinéma vérité quality to it (not dissimilar from Darren Aronofsky‘s The Wrestler or Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher) and Safdie isn’t afraid to really dive deep into the complicated psyche of the heavyweight star – I was gripped throughout. The fight sequences are authentically brutal and there’s an interesting jazz-infused score by Nala Sinephro.

This is easily the best performance of Dwayne Johnson’s career. He excels as Kerr, and I found it fascinating how he’s often incredibly sweet and polite from the outside, but you know there’s a screw loose that could snap at any moment. He gets Kerr’s mannerisms spot on and I really felt for the character as the odds begin to stack against him, Johnson playing him with a tinge of sadness and regret.But it’s not just Johnson’s film. Emily Blunt is excellent too as his high-maintenance girlfriend who also has her demons, but Ryan Bader stands out as Coleman, who has to balance his own career while trying to keep Kerr under check too.

I suspect The Smashing Machine will largely be shrugged as a film and will be remembered more for Dwayne Johnson’s performance. But that’s a real shame because there’s a lot more going for it and Safdie really succeeds with diving into the inner psyche of the troubled fighter. Some have labelled the story as unremarkable, but that’s exactly the point – this is a film that’s about a fall from greatness and how a complicated individual such as Kerr navigates relationships and mental obstacles. This film really succeeds by looking past the sport’s shimmery gleam and how to accept and make the most of a mundane routine.