By Jackson Arterberry
A/V Editor

Benny Safdie’s “The Smashing Machine” isn’t a typical sports biopic. Instead of chasing triumph or redemption, the filmmaker builds an anti-sports movie that keeps audiences at a distance. His camera often stays outside the ropes or high above the ring, breaking up the action rather than pulling viewers into it. A steady mix of pop, rock and jazz underscores the artifice, reminding audiences that this is cinema, not spectacle.

Poster for The Smashing machine. Courtesy of A24.

Most sports films aim for immersion. Safdie takes the opposite approach. His film resists emotional payoff, and even the casting of Dwayne Johnson, still best known to many as The Rock, adds another layer of self-awareness. The audience cannot help but draw parallels between Johnson’s wrestling fame and the story of real-life fighter Mark Kerr, whose brief prominence in mixed martial arts forms the backbone of the film. Safdie does not mythologize Kerr, he dissects him.

The film loosely follows “The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr”, the 2002 documentary directed by John Hyams, who receives a producer credit here. Safdie opens in 1997 with Kerr’s first major MMA tournament in São Paulo, Brazil, at a time when the sport was raw and loosely regulated. When the fledgling UFC fails to sustain his rise, Kerr travels to Japan to compete in the Pride Fighting Championships, where fame, pain and addiction collide.

One fight ends in controversy after an opponent uses an illegal technique, prompting a no-decision ruling that sends Kerr into a downward spiral. Painkillers and other drugs become part of his daily life, a dependency worsened by his volatile relationship with girlfriend Dawn, played by Emily Blunt. Kerr tries to recover, but Dawn does not, and their collapse plays out against his friend Mark Coleman (played by Ryan Bader) and his growing success. Their potential showdown in the ring feels more hollow than heroic, a deliberate break from the genre’s usual climax.

At the center of it all is Johnson, giving one of the most restrained performances of his career. Covered in heavy makeup that calls attention to his celebrity rather than concealing it, he plays Kerr as soft-spoken and self-conscious, a man who mumbles about his “sensitive tummy” one moment and smashes a door the next. The contrast between Kerr’s quiet vulnerability and sudden rage defines both the performance and the film’s uneasy rhythm.

When “The Smashing Machine” finally reaches its third act, including the comeback fights, the home-front conflict and the inevitable fall, some of its early tension fades. Yet even this deflation feels intentional. Safdie, who wrote and edited the film, has long been interested in discomfort and expectation, as seen in “Uncut Gems” and the TV series “The Curse.” Here, he stretches the sports biopic until its familiar beats collapse under their own weight.

Johnson on set of the Smashing Machine. Courtesy of A24.

The film ends not with a victory but with the actual Mark Kerr, living an ordinary life far from the spotlight. It is a quiet, unsentimental conclusion that denies the traditional rush of resolution.

“The Smashing Machine” is not a crowd-pleaser, and it may frustrate viewers expecting a conventional Dwayne Johnson vehicle. But Safdie’s deliberate distance and Johnson’s subdued performance create something unusual for the genre, a portrait of a fighter that refuses to glorify the fight.