{"id":10042414,"date":"2025-10-01T04:22:01","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T08:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/?p=10042414"},"modified":"2025-10-01T04:22:02","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T08:22:02","slug":"the-smashing-machine-review-the-rock-dominates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/2025\/10\/01\/the-smashing-machine-review-the-rock-dominates\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Smashing Machine’ Review: The Rock dominates"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Editor\u2019s Note<\/em><\/strong>: This review originally ran as part of our coverage of the<\/em> 2025\u00a0Toronto International Film Festival<\/a>, and today we\u2019re re-publishing it with the film\u2019s wider release. <\/em>Check out\u00a0our extensive review slate from TIFF50<\/a>, revisit\u00a0our official curtain-raiser<\/a>, and check the\u00a0complete Vanyaland coverage archives<\/a>\u00a0from prior editions.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Benny Safdie\u2019s The Smashing Machine<\/em><\/strong> is essentially about learning how to lose. Early on, our protagonist, the champion mixed martial artist Mark Kerr (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) is asked by a Japanese journalist how he\u2019ll take it if his opponent comes out on top. He doesn\u2019t even think it\u2019s possible, and you can see the growing frustration on his face as the writer pushes the question. It\u2019s a concept that he \u201ccan\u2019t even intellectualize.\u201d Losing just doesn\u2019t compute \u2014 all he knows is victory, and he can\u2019t conceive of a universe in which he might get his ass handed to him by someone. Of course, the next night, he gets his ass handed to him by a Russian kickboxer, using moves that the Pride Fighting Championship supposedly banned, and, even though the decision\u2019s later ruled a \u201cNo Contest,\u201d the damage has been done. He\u2019s a loser, weeping openly at his locker for all the golden glories in his future that are now marred by this blemish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The loss rocks his foundation in more ways than one. His girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt) senses something\u2019s really wrong with him. He\u2019s been using opiates to get through the day, managing the abuse he puts his body through for a payday with a few units of comfort in the downtime. This involves a lot of charm and effort on his part, managing doctors, pharmacies, and insurance. His best friend, sometimes trainer, and fellow fighter Mark Coleman (former Bellator champ Ryan Bader) is worried about him too, but he\u2019s miles away in Ohio, far removed from Kerr\u2019s house in Phoenix, hearing about it through panicked calls. After he overdoses, he has his \u201ccome-to-Jesus\u201d moment following a conversation with Coleman, goes to rehab, and gets back to work, training for another Pride tournament. Working with trainer Bas Ritter (playing himself), Mark gets back in the best shape of his life and rolls his way through the first round. Then, right when it looks like he might square off against Coleman in the Final, he loses in the semifinals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does all that (publicly available knowledge) sound unsatisfying? Well, it isn\u2019t. The Smashing Machine <\/em>is a fascinating exploration of one enigmatic man\u2019s struggles and how he overcame them without dipping into the deep end of the Rocky<\/em> pool of sentiment. It\u2019s set at a moment in the history of MMA that is pure aesthetic catnip for a director like Safdie, who takes the weird world of combat sports in the late \u201890s and early \u201800s and makes it feel big-screen cinematic. There\u2019s a fantastic depth and richness to his imagery that always escaped the tapes of Pride and early UFC cards, immediate, occasionally beautiful, and often just plain strange<\/em>. There\u2019s always been a surreal element to MMA\u2019s carny aspects \u2014 the \u201coctagon,\u201d pulled straight from Conan the Barbarian<\/em>, fighters emerging from giant smoking plywood pyramids, and pyrotechnic displays set to an electric guitar performance of Japan\u2019s national anthem. Those elements are vastly more interesting to Safdie than the fights, and they\u2019re handsomely recreated here. The score, by jazz composer and harp virtuoso Nala Sinephro, is one of the year\u2019s biggest treats for a music nerd inclined towards film scores, and the way Safdie uses it to heighten the emotional landscapes is truly impressive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s also impressive is Johnson\u2019s performance, which is legitimately the best work he\u2019s ever done in a dramatic non-action context outside of a wrestling ring (though his comedy is usually pretty funny). Kerr\u2019s nature plays to his strengths as an actor, namely in how warm and gentle he is despite his hulking frame, and how so much of that is underwritten by anxiety \u2014 he\u2019s aware of how ephemeral his life as a fighter is. He\u2019s convinced himself that he\u2019s invincible as a kind of coping mechanism, which is understandable when you\u2019re gearing up to get a knee slammed into the back of your skull. That kind of confidence is hard to come by, and once it\u2019s shattered, it\u2019s impossible to get back. Yet Johnson manages to stress his growth without resorting to easy clich\u00e9, and the atypical story beats help him avoid the pitfalls by refusing to indulge the easy choice.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet The Smashing Machine <\/em>is built from the ground up to support his success, and it\u2019s probably the wisest series of choices Johnson\u2019s made as a producer of his own star vehicles. Taking this story nearly beat-for-beat from the John Hyams documentary it\u2019s adapted from was one. Another was hiring Safdie, who has experience manicuring a project to suit his lead\u2019s needs. The casting is indicative of that commitment, engineered to offset his weaknesses while pumping up his strengths. It\u2019s evident that Johnson trusts Blunt in a different way than a lot of his co-stars in other movies, and there\u2019s a legitimate intimacy to their work together here that feels naturalistic (and although Blunt is excellent here \u2013 she adds some devastating chaos to his recovery \u2013 I do wish I could see the world in which Julia Fox played this role), but it\u2019s the non-actors, typical of a Safdie production, who go a long way to making this work as well as it does. Bader and Ritter are the kind of no-bullshit guys who, for a leading man steeped in sports entertainment, give the moment credibility and relatability specifically to Johnson\u2019s lived experience.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In light of the absolute drubbing Johnson\u2019s gotten from the press ever since the\u00a0Black Adam\u00a0<\/em>days, it\u2019s somewhat poetic that\u00a0The Smashing Machine<\/em>\u00a0is his big return to the multiplex. He had some absolute dogs over the past half-decade, and was omnipresent in entertainment in a way that usually results in a star losing every ounce of goodwill they\u2019ve accumulated. He went from being an iconic wrestler to a movie star that no one took particularly seriously to the most bankable person in the industry in\u00a0such<\/em>\u00a0a short amount of time. Like Kerr, it honestly wasn\u2019t particularly obvious to know when he\u2019d lose \u2013 you could blame shit like\u00a0Baywatch<\/em>\u00a0on the studio needing IP to get out the door or a\u00a0Fast and Furious<\/em>\u00a0feud on Vin Diesel or whatnot \u2013 but the string of poorly-received and terribly-considered projects that should have been within his wheelhouse had him stacking Ls. As mirrored in Mark Kerr\u2019s journey to hell and back, The Rock had to learn how to lose to find himself again, and from the look of it, he\u2019s back and better than ever.\u00a0
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: This review originally ran as part of our coverage of the 2025\u00a0Toronto International Film Festival, and today we\u2019re re-publishing it with the film\u2019s wider release. Check out\u00a0our extensive review slate from TIFF50, revisit\u00a0our official curtain-raiser, and check the\u00a0complete Vanyaland coverage archives\u00a0from prior editions. Benny Safdie\u2019s The Smashing Machine is essentially about learning how to lose. Early on, our protagonist, the champion mixed martial artist Mark Kerr (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) is asked by a Japanese journalist how he\u2019ll take it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":10042327,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19452],"tags":[26409,12722,35621,21709,35896,35855],"class_list":["post-10042414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-filmtv","tag-header","tag-the-rock","tag-the-smashing-machine","tag-tiff","tag-tiff2025","tag-tiff50"],"yoast_head":"\n'The Smashing Machine' Review: The Rock dominates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In light of recent box office drubbings, it\u2019s somewhat 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