Emily Blunt<\/a>), and his struggles with substance abuse. As befitting the material\u2019s shallowness, the specific narcotics that Kerr fancies are left vague; there are only brief mentions of opioids and painkillers, as well as sights of tiny vials filled with clear liquid. Similarly, when Kerr has a near-death episode thanks to his habit, it\u2019s kept off-screen and only discussed in the past tense, the better to keep things simple and easily digestible.<\/p>\nAt every juncture, The Smashing Machine<\/i> pulls its punches, and that\u2019s truest when it comes to presenting a three-dimensional portrait of its protagonist\u2014and, relatedly, concocting a reason to care about his saga. In credit-sequence narration married to footage of his initial victories in 1997 S\u00e3o Paulo, Kerr\u2014who speaks in a soft and measured tone that suggests he\u2019s carefully considering what he\u2019s saying\u2014states that \u201cwinning is the best feeling there is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later, a reporter in Japan, where many of his bouts take place, asks him what it would feel like to lose, and the concept is so foreign to him that he barely manages an answer (\u201cIf I lost, I don\u2019t know how to respond\u201d), thereby foreshadowing the crisis of confidence on the horizon.<\/p>\n
Kerr is such an unstoppable goliath that the prospect of vulnerability appears to be the biggest threat to his career and life, aside, that is, from Staples, whose big hair and cleavage-baring tops immediately mark her as trouble.<\/p>\n
Their hostile pre-match locker room spat, which sends fellow fighter and Kerr\u2019s best friend Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader) hurrying to the exit, is a bad omen. Sure enough, their relationship is a volatile mixture of lovey-dovey Phoenix domesticity and heated scraps in which he takes out his anger on a door (obliterating it with his bare hands) and she smashes the bowl he purchased for her in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
Theirs is a standard-issue unhealthy relationship, with Kerr prioritizing his training and fights ahead of everything else (save for getting totally zonked on drugs), and Staples pushing her beau\u2019s buttons with needy, manipulative selfishness.<\/p>\n
Kerr tells Staples that the high he gets from pounding dudes\u2019 faces is \u201corgasmic,\u201d so when he finally stumbles in the ring, he\u2019s badly shaken, and the fact that he was bested due to illegal maneuvers on his opponent\u2019s part\u2014resulting in a \u201cno-contest\u201d decision that still stings like a loss\u2014exacerbates his agony.<\/p>\n
The root cause of the grappler\u2019s hang-ups, however, are ignored by The Smashing Machine<\/i>. Safdie mercifully avoids providing the types of explanations for Kerr\u2019s issues (abusive fathers, absent mothers, childhood bullying, etc.) that are the stock and trade of Hollywood biopics. Yet he doesn\u2019t offer up anything in their place. Consequently, the man comes across as just a gargantuan combatant with a patient demeanor, a ferocious temper, and an inclination to do self-destructive things in service of his dreams.<\/p>\n
The Smashing Machine<\/i> doesn\u2019t depict Kerr as an ultimate-fighting legend; aside from the film\u2019s first few minutes, he fails in the ring as much as he succeeds. Nor does it cast him as a complicated individual whose story has something to impart about competition, sacrifice, or the zig-zagging line separating love and hate.<\/p>\n
Kerr\u2019s battle with addiction is also simply an addendum, since Safdie skips over his process of getting clean, assuming that a single phone call to a sponsor (which Staples uses as an excuse for picking on him) will suffice. The real drama is almost always recounted rather than shown, whereas irrelevant incidents\u2014like a 2000 tournament introduction featuring an electric guitarist playing the Japanese national anthem and a harpist singing \u201cThe Star-Spangled Banner\u201d\u2014are dwelled on to excessive ends.<\/p>\n
Johnson doesn\u2019t overdo it as Kerr, to a fault; while the man is a nice enough guy, good-naturedly defending ultimate fighting with a grandmother in a doctor\u2019s waiting room, cheering on Coleman as he goes on a remarkable in-ring run, and helping his coach deal with an unspecified physical malady by injecting him with life-saving narcotics, his is a basic story of accepting imperfection in himself and others.<\/p>\n
Safdie\u2019s direction affects faux-verit\u00e9 authenticity but it has none of the gritty urgency of his collaborations with brother Josh (Heaven Knows What<\/i>, Good Time<\/i>, Uncut Gems<\/i>). Instead, his style is just a pose designed to conceal the proceedings\u2019 emptiness and lethargy, the latter of which is most pronounced during a climactic fight montage that drags at the very moment the film needs to soar.<\/p>\n
Whenever Kerr begins heading down an ill-advised path, Nala Sinephro\u2019s score breaks into bluesy saxophone\u2014a groan-worthy touch that\u2019s indicative of The Smashing Machine<\/i>\u2019s calculations. After falling short in its quest for poignant uplift, Safdie\u2019s film indulges in the hoary non-fiction coda that is as ho-hum and unenlightening as the primary action seems, depressingly, apt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In The Smashing Machine, Dwayne \u201cThe Rock\u201d Johnson dons facial prosthetics to play a pro fighter whose thoughtful, kind, patient disposition is the exact opposite of the star\u2019s brash, antagonistic, trash-talking WWE persona. Nonetheless, the wrestler-turned-actor can\u2019t fully disappear into the role of Mark Kerr, an early ultimate-fighting pioneer, as the film\u2019s fixation on his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2010956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[326505,360077,344655,367722,365078,318702,333428],"class_list":["post-2010955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-benny-safdie","tag-mark-coleman","tag-mark-kerr","tag-patient-disposition","tag-staples","tag-toronto-international-film-festival","tag-venice-film-festival"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Sorry-The-Rock-Wont-Win-Any-Oscars-for-\u2018The-Smashing.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2010955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2010956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2010955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2010955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2010955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}