Introduction
Every awards season brings a film that seems engineered to rewrite a star’s narrative. For Dwayne Johnson, that mantle is The Smashing Machine, a prestige sports biopic shaped to shed his blockbuster armor and reveal something raw. On paper it reads like a winning parlay: a revered independent studio, an ambitious filmmaker in Benny Safdie taking the solo-director reins, a sizable budget that signals big-league intent, and a true story about a fighter whose off-the-mat demons are as compelling as his victories. The expectation was simple: the role that finally wins Johnson serious critical hardware.
After festival premieres and a wave of buzz, the verdict is far less triumphant. The Smashing Machine is not a disaster, but it is a misfire. It showcases a star working hard to find new gears and a director committed to tactile, lived-in detail. Yet the movie keeps ducking the punches that would make it matter, pulling away from hard questions about self, addiction, and the corrosive bargain of winning at all costs. The result is a film that talks like a character study but thinks like a highlight reel. It rarely feels bruised.
The Promise Versus The Picture
Why this had “can’t miss” written all over it
Benny Safdie has built a reputation for pressure-cooker storytelling. His collaborations have a signature: jittery momentum, thorny protagonists, and a camera that never lets you breathe. Handing him the story of Mark Kerr seemed inspired. Kerr is not just another MMA pioneer. He is a case study in how a singular talent can be undone by everything that hides between rounds: pain, dependency, pride, and the quiet wreckage that fame leaves behind. Johnson, meanwhile, signaled a genuine transformation. He altered his voice, spent long sessions in prosthetics, and put aside the crowd-pleasing grin for a haunted stare. The table was set for a bruising portrait of a man unlearning the only thing he knows how to do.
What the film actually delivers
The movie gives us the broad arc of Kerr’s rise and unraveling, but it skims across the surface of why he is coming apart. Major events arrive with hushed restraint. Consequences blur. The storytelling wants authenticity, yet the scenes most likely to show Kerr’s inner fractures are handled with a politeness that drains them of power. Instead of a descent that feels inevitable, we get a sequence of incidents that feel selected for texture. You feel guided, not gripped.
Johnson’s Transformation: Impressive Craft, Limited Impact
The work you can see
Johnson does not coast. He modulates his voice to a soft rasp that sits in the throat. He wears his bulk differently: less superhero posture and more wrestler’s weariness. He moves like a man who took too many shots years before the movie begins. The prosthetic work is careful without turning him into a wax figure. In moments when Kerr faces only himself, Johnson finds something smaller and more fragile than his screen image usually allows.
Why it still feels held back
The limitation is not effort. It is context. The script keeps Johnson’s most volatile choices out of frame or softened by an editorial cutaway. You sense a performance designed to crack, yet the movie repeatedly cushions it. When the character makes self-destructive decisions, the film observes them rather than interrogates them. That turns Johnson’s transformation into a technical showcase more than an emotional one. He is acting in a different, tougher film than the one he is in.
The Relationship Drama That Should Carry The Weight
The love story with jagged edges
A sports biopic lives or dies on what happens away from the ring. The relationship at the center here has fire and volatility. When the film slows down and lets two people talk without the soundtrack nudging our feelings, you glimpse the heartbreaking loop of apology, relapse, and hope that defines so many lives around addiction. These scenes should be the spine.
The missed opportunity
Too often the relationship is used as punctuation, not propulsion. Arguments flare and end. Big promises are made and drift away. We are told there is a cycle. We do not feel the time it takes to break one. Without that lived rhythm, the love story becomes a collection of sharp moments that never cohere into a devastating whole. The film keeps choosing the clean cut over the messy aftermath.
Safdie’s Aesthetic: Grit You Can Touch, Stakes You Cannot
The craft that works
Safdie’s eye for tactile detail remains a draw. The locker rooms feel like they smell. The handheld camera puts you on the edge of a folding chair. The period textures look right, from kit bags to broadcast graphics. The fight choreography is admirably unglamorous. Punches look heavy instead of cinematic. You can hear tape crackle and gloves scrape. The sound design has that low hum of fluorescents and the clatter of metal benches that places you in a world built by sweat and compromise.
The craft that undercuts the story
The same restraint that avoids cliché also avoids catharsis. A movie does not need melodrama to land an emotional blow, but it needs escalation. Safdie’s style here operates at a steady simmer. The temperature rarely rises. Scenes end before they scorch. If you never let the story boil, the audience never understands how close the pot is to spilling over. The result is a mood of authentic grit paired with an oddly polite narrative. It is all bruise and no blood.
The Character Study That Pulls Its Punches
Addiction presented as atmosphere
Kerr’s relationship with pain management and dependency should be the movie’s moral center. Instead, it is presented like a weather pattern: present, shaping the day, yet strangely impersonal. We see the rituals. We do not see the bargaining. We understand the fallout. We do not sit in the shame. By not forcing the character to articulate what he believes about himself, the film denies us the distinctly human contradictions that make a portrait unforgettable.
Fame without a thesis
The movie is sharp on logistics and soft on ideas. What does it think fame asks of a body. What does it argue competition takes from a soul. The film arranges scenes that imply answers, then declines to stake out a point of view. You can sense a better version where every interview, every weigh-in, every handshake carries a thesis about what winning means. This version shrugs.
The Budget, The Stakes, The Studio
The cost of prestige
A24’s push into bigger budgets sets an expectation: the film should feel like an event, not because of spectacle, but because of conviction. The money buys time, talent, and the freedom to take daring swings. You can see the spend on screen in the period reconstruction and the caliber of collaborators. What you do not feel is the audacity that justifies the leap. The movie does not lack craft. It lacks nerve.
What that means for audiences
Fans coming for a gritty sports saga may find the fight scenes too muted. Viewers eager to watch Johnson detonate his persona may admire the craft while wishing the film would trap him in a corner and force the ugliest truths out. The middle ground satisfies neither camp. This is a film that respects its subject and its star. Respect is not the problem. Fear of getting ugly is.
Comparisons That Clarify The Shortfall
The spiritual neighbors
Two obvious touchpoints exist for a story like this: a bruised classic about the cost of greatness and a modern indie about a performer whose body is a bargaining chip. Those films picked their thesis early and then tested it in every scene. The Smashing Machine follows their contours but declines their cruelty. It wants the ache without the shiver. It wants authenticity without risk.
What the best versions do differently
The best sports dramas make the sport a mirror. Each round shows you a new angle of a person you thought you knew. The fights begin and end. The soul remains mostly off camera.
Where The Film Still Succeeds
The flashes that linger
There are individual images and exchanges that cut through. A quiet locker room after a win that feels like a loss. A line delivered too softly to be a threat and too plainly to be a lie. A shot that holds just long enough for pride to curdle into doubt. These moments prove the team knows how to find the truth. They simply do not string enough of them together to make the truth unavoidable.
Johnson’s path forward
Even if this film does not become the awards coronation many predicted, Johnson’s willingness to dismantle his usual screen presence is meaningful. He looks smaller without looking weak. He lets silence hang. That is not nothing. It is a foundation. With a script that refuses to look away, he has the tools to surprise everyone.
Final Verdict: A Respectful Miss
The Smashing Machine is full of visible effort and admirable restraint. It is never cynical. It never cheats. It also never digs. A film about a man destroying himself to keep winning must choose discomfort over decorum. This one keeps choosing decorum. That turns a story of consequence into a movie of fragments: sharp, well observed, and ultimately safe.
The irony is painful. In chasing seriousness, the film forgets to be specific. In avoiding cliché, it avoids commitment. You leave with an appreciation for the world it built and the labor each collaborator put in, but without the bruised heart that a great sports biopic leaves behind. For Johnson, it is a step toward a richer acting future. For Safdie, it is a reminder that control without conviction can feel like control without pulse.
Conclusion
A star risks his image. A studio risks its balance sheet. A director risks his reputation as an uncompromising storyteller. The outcome should feel inevitable: a movie that grabs you by the collar and refuses to let go. Instead, The Smashing Machine nods at depth and then backs away. It is not a knockout, not even a split-decision win. It is a wide-points loss: professional, polished, and oddly forgettable. The passion around the project was real. The film rarely matches it. For all the talk of transformation, the only thing that truly changes is our expectation. Next time, if this team wants to break the mold, they will have to break the skin.