Directed By Benny Safdie

Starring – Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader

The Plot – MMA fighter Mark Kerr (Johnson) reaches the peak of his career but faces personal hardships along the way.

Rated R for adult language and some drug abuse.

The Smashing Machine | Official Trailer HD | A24

POSITIVES

The earliest days of mixed martial arts were a lawlessly unregulated freak show that sacrificed strength for spectacle, and while “The Smashing Machine” isn’t an overwhelming triumph for Benny Safdie’s first film away from his co-director brother, it is a story about the toxic obsession with winning and how it ultimately paints an unrelenting adversary mentally than anyone that Mark ever faced in the ring. Safdie’s single greatest strength is vividly depicting the unappealing essence of a controversial sport that is on the ropes of obscurity, not only within the depths of Maceo Bishop’s grainy and weathered cinematography, seamlessly matching the consistency of the imagery from the documentary of the same name, with VHS styled captivity that atmospherically channels the moral ambiguity of such an industry, but also in the ticking timebomb that is Mark’s life, with his combination of a toxic love life and injecting of illegal substances that makes every tender scene alongside him feel like the poking of nerves, until he dramatically deconstructs near the end of the movie’s opening act. Safdie’s direction also seamlessly showcases that much of the Safdie’s familiar sensibilities seemed to have stemmed from his creative captivity, as everything from the tight-knit claustrophobic framing meant to ratchet tension, to the gritty canvas within the film’s presentation, effectively evokes an uncompromisingly grim disposition almost immediately on the circumstances of the characters, that makes the glory that Mark seeks void of any grander appeal to those outsiders of the sport, and while Mark is already an imperfect protagonist solely on the unhealthy indulgences that he openly embraces to very little shame, it cements the unmitigated commitment necessary to the addiction of audience ovation, whether empathetically or disturbingly. The action in the fight sequences are intense and chaotic, even without sometimes being completely coherent on the detection of what’s transpiring, and with impactful aspects such as the intricacies of the movie’s sound design conveying circumstantial heft to each devastating blow, as well as Nala Sinephro’s percussion-fueled jazz compositions within the score, Safdie steers these manic physical conflicts that evolve with the spontaneity of a fight’s momentum, featuring a give and take choreography between the fighters that authentically mirrors the consistencies of a mixed martial arts contest. In particular on Sinephro’s eclectically imaginative tones, the composer is able to effortlessly articulate how the motions of a fight seamlessly mimic the rhythmic impulses of instrumentals, with the tide turning moments laid to rest while featuring trumpets and cellos in ways that cement profound punctuation to the afterthoughts of what transpires. Also similar to some of Safdie’s previous films, the casting calls upon real life figures of the depicted world, in ways that breed an emphatic element of authenticity to the physicality factors of the fights, but also the seamless transition of drifting back to the movie’s depicted time frame of 1997-2000. While my first experience with the film conjured noticeable cameos from MMA fighters such as Ryan Bader, Baz Rhuten, James McSweeny, and top boxer in the world, Oleksandr Usyk, there’s room to believe that so many more will feel detectable from even bigger fans of the sport, and while a majority of them are deduced to single lines of dialogue, or even a one-off visual, Bader actually holds his own against one of the most charismatic actors in the industry, surmising heartfelt guidance and determination to his portrayal of Mark Coleman, that articulates an entirely different movie persisting in the distance of this one. However, this is the film rumored to be Dwayne Johnson’s flirting of Academy Awards, and while I don’t exactly feel him playing a fighter is a far stretch for a professional wrestler turned actor, I can say that the praise is warranted in this being the single best acting that Johnson has performed to date, without question. While the physical transformation is obviously not a problem for a guy dubbed “The Rock”, it’s the emotional duality that Dwayne supplants to the character that is most endearing to his depiction, with the soft sincerities of his time outside of the ring enacting an articulately warm and inviting presence, compared to his in-ring demeanor being one of an unchained monster that brutalizes anyone in his path to worldwide acclaim, and is especially the case during scenes of unbridled intensity alongside his wife (Played devilishly deceiving from Emily Blunt), Johnson continuously rises to the occasion by letting go of all of the anguish that plague his perils with imperfection, and with some excellent make-up and prosthetics work from the production constructing an authentic nose and facial structuring of the real-life Kerr, there are moments in this movie that somehow obscure Dwayne, despite a larger than life frame that could truly only be from one person.

NEGATIVES

While there’s plenty to applaud about Safdie’s lone directorial debut here, “The Smashing Machine” strives for the same element of unattainable perfection that condemns its protagonist, and in similar fashion, settles for being a good movie that doesn’t quite live up to the hype of being a great one worthy of awards praise across the board. For starters, the script from Safdie is quite an erratic mess throughout the consistency of the two hour engagement, with insufferable repetition the only consistency in structure or aiming direction to engage audiences in the narrative, leaving it feeling like a Wikipedia bouncing between Mark’s most defining moments, without the quieted nuance moments that grow the intense ones naturally. It leaves very little opportunity to maintain tabs on just what’s transpiring in Mark’s life, especially if you’re not a hardcore MMA fan that speaks the language of its terminology, and while some clumsy overhead narration occasionally pops into the audibility of the movie’s sound deposits, the narration from the commentators covering the sport are reading lines of exposition-heavy dialogue that simply wouldn’t be included from a journalist of the sport, in which they’re unsubtly conveying everything that the movie wants us to feel, at any given moment. On top of this, the second act sags dramatically, after a promising opening act, trading in the meat of the narrative of Mark’s quest for fame and notoriety, for the spousal bouts of despair between he and Dawn, which have its own abundance of problems. This is obviously meant to ring in the climactic drama for the film, with long-winded diatribes in each of the characters continuously unloading these passive-aggressive outbursts towards one another, but it simply becomes a tedious chore to experience, even after five minutes of it, and considering Mark went on to marry this woman for six years, where the two had a child together, the way they frame her here is concerning to say the least, coming across as the single most detestable human being responsible for all of the negativity in Mark’s life, and the kind that feels like a wet blanket of sagging sadness, each time she weaves back into frame. As previously illustrated, Blunt does her absolute most to make the character memorable, and in some regards she absolutely succeeds at such an open-ended objective, but the script does her no favors whatsoever towards becoming an endearing aspect of the script’s compelling nature, and it all just feels like too much, even if the real life Dawn was legitimately this way. Finally, I don’t think the script spends enough time articulating how Mark was such a pivotal part in the evolution of the sport, despite so much of the movie’s marketing and on-screen text during the ending conveying such. Considering the film spends an overwhelming majority of its time picking up the pieces after one of Mark’s various traumas, I don’t think it truly spends enough time on the business side of the spectrum to contextualize why he was such a game-changer for the sport, and with the end to his story ending abruptly while strangely shifting to Coleman’s eventual triumph, it doesn’t exactly highlight Kerr in the most endearing light, leaving it refusing to commit to an overarching angle that it didn’t come close to vividly illustrating for the advantageous insight of its audience.

OVERALL
“The Smashing Machine” takes plenty of sacrificial punches from a standardly stumbling screenplay that unknowingly shows the flaws in its narrative, but ultimately goes the distance with an embodying performance from Dwayne Johnson, who showcases the most vulnerability of his entire career. While Mark Kerr’s story is dubbed as one of a groundbreaking Mixed Martial Arts fighter who evolved the industry, the film simply doesn’t connect the dots enough in the extent of its three year odyssey to coherently convey the magnitude of his indisputable impact, leaving the ambition from Benny Safdie a bit lacking in his first solo effort.

My Grade: 6.9 or C+