The only way to describe Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is “larger than life.” You can see it in every frame of The Smashing Machine. Johnson plays Mark Kerr, a real-life mixed martial arts fighter who was the subject of an acclaimed documentary in 2002, just as the sport was gaining fans and a modicum of respectability. In one scene, Johnson rides in a Mercedes convertible with his on-again, off-again girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt). His hulking frame spills out of the passenger seat onto the center console. It looks for all the world like a toddler driving his electric toy car.
At this point, 23 years after The Scorpion King, The Rock has been famous for being an actor longer than he was for being a wrestler. His time as an up-and-coming faceman served as fodder for Young Rock, the bio-sitcom whose third season was shot in Memphis, where Johnson cut his teeth in the squared circle. The Rock’s considerable charisma has always had an undercurrent of limitless ambition. The man believes his own hype. Young Rock hinted at Johnson’s political ambitions, with its subplot of Johnson running for president in 2032. (At this point, I say sure, whatever. Anything is better than this.)
The Smashing Machine represents Johnson’s play for respectability. He’s a movie star, which is a rare and delicate thing. But that also means that Johnson is always playing some variation on The Rock, just as Cary Grant was always Cary Grant, no matter what movie he was in. Playing an MMA fighter is in Johnson’s wheelhouse, but Kerr was no Rock. He was a soft-spoken, modest person who battled self-doubt with opioid addiction. Johnson has never experienced self-doubt in his life. Could he stuff his huge personality into a smaller container?
The film is directed by Benny Safdie, half of the brother duo who brought us the tense thrillers Good Time and Uncut Gems. When he won the Silver Lion for Best Director at this year’s Venice International Film Festival, it came as a bit of a shock. The film’s premiere was well-received, with a lengthy standing ovation, but the talk of the festival was the searing docudrama The Voice of Hind Rajab, which set the record for longest ovation in film festival history with the audience on their feet for 23 minutes.
I’m going to have to disagree with the Venice jury. Safdie’s instincts are to play it close to the original documentary. Shooting handheld, he recreates a memorable scene in the waiting room of a doctor’s office where Kerr tries to explain MMA to a perplexed mom. When Kerr is at home with Dawn, the camera is a fly on the wall to a profoundly dysfunctional relationship. Johnson and Blunt go round and round, bickering about everything from the type of milk to use in his morning protein shake (whole) to proper pruning practices for the saguaro cactus. The fight sequences, of which there are many, never attain the visual poetry of Scorsese’s Raging Bull. They make MMA matches look squalid and brutal, which renders Kerr’s quest meaningless.
For superstar vehicles like this, you want to see the actor disappear into the role. Even with an impressive wig covering his famously bald dome, Johnson never quite manages to do that. He’s always The Rock, trying real hard not to be The Rock. Emotionally stunted and repetitive to the point of tedium, The Smashing Machine never manages to get out of first gear.
The Smashing Machine
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