\u201cUncut Gems.\u201d<\/a> But, despite its grainy, VHS aesthetics, \u201cThe Smashing Machine\u201d is a surprisingly conventional and oddly untroubled movie, albeit one that gives Johnson an indie-film platform for one of his finest performances.<\/p>\nAs Mark, Johnson has drained away much of his big-screen charisma. The part \u2014 brawny, often shirtless, frequently raging in the ring \u2014 is immediately so close to Johnson\u2019s own professional wrestling background that early scenes look almost documentary-like. But gone is the megawatt grin and the dashing eyebrow lift. Johnson\u2019s normally polished bald head is here covered with a closely cropped dark head of hair.<\/p>\n
In the movie\u2019s opening, Mark rhapsodizes about his feeling of domination. An opponent\u2019s fear, he says, you can \u201csmell in their scent.\u201d At this point, Mark has known only victory in thumping triumphs that leave him feeling like a god. Losing, he confesses, is unfathomable.<\/p>\n
The laws of moviedom decree, of course, that Mark will soon lose, and his well-earned sense of invincibility will shatter. \u201cThe Smashing Machine\u201d bounces between Mark\u2019s home and Japan, where the Pride Fighting Championship takes place. That\u2019s where Mark, a much-celebrated champion, is taken down by an illegal but nevertheless humbling move. After the fact, the match is ruled a tie, but the stink of defeat never dissipates.<\/p>\n
The real battle, in any case, is at home. Mark\u2019s dependence on opioids for the punishing extremes he endures is becoming desperate. \u201cThe Smashing Machine\u201d is based on John Hyams\u2019s 2002 documentary of the same name, and part of the nature of that film was the curiosity of Mark\u2019s extreme violence in the ring and his otherwise sweet passivity. In Safdie\u2019s film, Mark is asked in the doctor\u2019s waiting room if fighters hate each other during a bout. \u201cAbsolutely not,\u201d he replies.<\/p>\n
But while we don\u2019t doubt Mark\u2019s sincerity \u2014 he\u2019s as earnest as he is muscle-bound \u2014 Johnson also exudes an inner turmoil, and a struggle to keep his rage at bay while nursing mounting wounds to his ego. His body is so stiff, it\u2019s like he could snap at any moment.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the case for Mark, most of all, around his wife, Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt), a former Playboy model who’s shown as alternatively supportive and insensitive to Mark\u2019s situation. They feud often, sometimes immediately before a match, sometimes over how to make his shakes. When he tries to give up opioids, he takes her late-night drinking as a provocation. \u201cTreat me like a man,\u201d he tells her.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an awkward, perhaps judgmental characterization that would be all the more glaring if it weren\u2019t for Blunt\u2019s tact as a performer. But it throws \u201cThe Smashing Machine\u201d off course, especially when the movie seems to want to lean more on its other central relationship: that of Mark and his friend, trainer and sometimes competitor Mark Coleman (played by former Bellator champion Ryan Bader).<\/p>\n
In his films with his brother, Safdie has long brought real-life figures into their movie worlds, blurring fictional boundaries. Bader gives \u201cThe Smashing Machine\u201d a dose of documentary in his presence, but I\u2019d argue that Johnson\u2019s proximity to this world gives the movie its most compelling real-life echoes.<\/p>\n
I happen to think Johnson is also very good in full movie-star mode, especially when he has the chance to wryly undercut his big-screen presence in comedies like \u201cJumanji: Welcome to the Jungle\u201d or \u201cThe Tooth Fairy.\u201d But it\u2019s also captivating to see him so thoroughly settled into a character like he is in \u201cThe Smashing Machine\u201d while totally shorn of his charisma.<\/p>\n
Yet the potency of that performance is let down by a movie that fails to really grapple with the violent world around Mark, resorting instead for a blander appreciation of these MMA combatants. What does resonate, though, is the portrait of a human colossus who learns to accept defeat \u2014 a mountain of a man who looks like he could, without barely trying, rip someone\u2019s head off at any moment. Instead he takes a deep breath, and doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Smashing Machine,\u201d an A24 release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language and some drug abuse. Running time: 123 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.<\/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 uk.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Benny Safdie\u2019s \u201cThe Smashing Machine\u201d isn\u2019t what you think it is, especially if you think it\u2019s a movie about a British guy who thinks his typewriter is the tops. \u201cThe Smashing Machine\u201d would seem to bear all the hallmarks of something grittier, darker and more disturbing than it is. It\u2019s the solo directorial debut of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2065410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[326505,305874,360077,344655,360534],"class_list":["post-2065409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-benny-safdie","tag-dwayne-johnson","tag-mark-coleman","tag-mark-kerr","tag-smashing-machine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Dwayne-Johnson-has-never-been-better-in-The-Smashing-Machine.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2065409","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=2065409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2065409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2065411,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2065409\/revisions\/2065411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2065410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2065409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2065409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2065409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}