In the late ’90s, Mark Kerr was a superstar in the emerging industry of mixed martial arts, a charismatic fighter who scored one win after another. Or at least he was a superstar to the niche but growing international audience that followed the burgeoning sport, and the new film The Smashing Machine argues that Kerr was a pioneer who never got his due, a victim of timing, circumstance and addiction.
Dwayne Johnson plays Kerr in the film, and unless you consider his more intense storylines from his WWF days, this is his first dramatic performance. Johnson doesn’t disappear into the character — it’s unmistakably former professional wrestler The Rock up there — but this is one of those classic cases of the actor’s own history overlapping with the character’s struggle for legitimacy.
So there’s a metatextual poignancy here, which extends to the style of the film. The Smashing Machine was inspired by a 2002 HBO documentary about Kerr, and writer-director Benny Safdie has lifted scenes directly from the earlier film. His screenplay adopts a loose, incidental structure, as if he wants to recreate the rhythms of real life. He casts non-actors alongside major movie stars and shoots it on 16mm film, giving it a grainy, verite feel.
Safdie is best known for directing the relentless comic thrillers Good Time and Uncut Gems with his brother Josh, and here’s another story of a man trying to outrun his vices and only succeeding sometimes. But unlike the morally corrupt protagonists of those earlier films, Mark Kerr is a gentle giant. He’s a hulking wall of flesh (Johnson apparently packed on 30 pounds of muscle for the part), but he’s often as soft as Ferdinand the bull. We see him talking to a sweet old lady in a doctor’s waiting room, and pausing to admire the sunset out an airplane window. It’s an ironic contrast to Kerr’s brutality in the ring, but Safdie may as well be battering us about the head with his point.
The bulk of the action takes place from the late ’90s to the early 2000s, and it follows two simultaneous tracks: one about Kerr’s career and win record as the sport changes around
him, and the other about his rocky relationship with his girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt). Kerr also becomes increasingly reliant on heroin, which helps him manage his aching body and causes him to drift off.
Safdie’s greatest weakness here is the character of Dawn: She’s so sketchily written and her behavior so arbitrary that it’s as if she has a switch that toggles between the modes of “dutiful girlfriend” and “screaming girlfriend.” Their relationship only changes in terms of the intensity of their arguments. Their shouting matches are also, I think, supposed to mirror the MMA matches, but they’re so clumsily done that we don’t understand why tension has escalated, or why they even put up with each other anymore. No doubt drugs and alcohol are to blame, but the movie is coy about that, too.
Safdie obviously admires Mark Kerr and has some kind of love for MMA, but he doesn’t turn those feelings into a compelling story. The Smashing Machine is getting attention because of Johnson’s performance, and he’s quite good. If only the script backed him up.