The Smashing Machine
Review by Mark Woodring
Much has been said about The Smashing Machine, focusing mostly on “The Rock’s” seeming final evolution into a “serious actor:” Dwayne Johnson.
**NOTE: You can read Mark’s review below, then listen/watch as he and Ryan discuss the movie further. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
123 Minutes, Rated R
Written and Directed by Benny Safdie
Synopsis:
The story of mixed-martial arts and UFC champion, Mark Kerr.
Bennie Safdie wrote and directed this adaptation of Mark Kerr’s fighting life in the narrow window of 1997 through 2000.
You might think that a film which covers such a compressed period (relatively) would be a tightly wound narrative, but you would be wrong.
Safdie’s script is a disjointed mess, dropping us in a moment with no context, then jumping to another moment, again with no frame of reference, and this continues until the dramatic turn of Kerr’s life into one of a recovering addict.
Add to that the relationship between Kerr and his friend Mark Coleman, also a fighter of some reknown, which is supposed to be a grounding factor for Kerr, but which fails to truly establish it’s foundation, and we have a performance by Johnson, a serious, quality performance, wasted in a film which does nothing to support it.
Fighting is so important to Kerr’s story, but the details and importance of it as a sport are glossed over in favor of Johnson’s admittedly better-than-average portrayal of a man at odds with himself.
But even Kerr’s background is left unexplored or unexplained for us. Instead, Safdie seems to want the film to succeed solely on the broad shoulders of Johnson’s performance, and it simply isn’t enough.
Emily Blunt’s turn as the stereotypical exploitative/manipulative girlfriend has been done before, and better, leaving the audience to wonder time and again why they should care about this story at all.
Ultimately, what might have been a qualify sports biopic is instead simply a paint-by-numbers exercise for the entire cast, a surface level exploration of moments, but not a life, Kerr’s life, which seems to have the elements worthy of our interest, based on the paper-thin details we get.
Not a bad film, but a barely good one, with Johnson’s performance the only saving grace of any note.
The Smashing Machine blasts into theaters this Friday, October 3, and stars Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, and Ryan Bader.
And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.
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