After crafting Uncut Gems – the best movie of the last 10 years – out of non-stop anxiety, an all-timer Adam Sandler performance, and one of the maddest ensemble casts ever assembled, the last thing you might expect the Safdie brothers to do is creatively split up and each pursue their own biopic projects. Yet, with quasi-rival projects The Smashing Machine and Marty Supreme (both true sports stories, both in the awards conversation this year, both funded by A24), that’s exactly what Benny and Josh have done. First up is Benny’s The Smashing Machine which, as just a biopic, is basically serviceable. As a follow-up to Uncut Gems though? It’s a huge disappointment.
Dramatising the documentary of the same name, The Smashing Machine’s headline feature is Dwayne Johnson giving his first actual *performance* since Pain & Gain all the way back in 2013. Finally allowing himself to escape his bankable-but-boring schtick of basically just playing The Rock in everything, Johnson adds a whole bundle of new strings to his bow as Mark Kerr, one of the first ‘stars’ of the now-infamous UFC, across a few years of his life (1997-2000) as he competes for glory while battling a painkiller addiction.
The core problem Safdie has is that, while Mark is a fascinating character, the story he’s in is not. Even the worst of the drug troubles feel like they’re resolved simply and without any true drama, while his relationship with his volatile girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt) is given really short shrift – you get to know very little about her across the two-hour runtime. If you’re a real UFC nut, getting to see this more barbaric, shoestring-budget version of the sport on the big screen will probably be fun, but Mark’s journey through a variety of Japanese tournaments has neither the grandiosity of something like Raging Bull nor the underdog spark of more conventional sports dramas.
Holding it all together, then, is Kerr himself, and Johnson’s performance. Soft-spoken yet physically terrifying, Johnson plays him like a giant little boy, his colossal size actually making him more childlike, somehow – a kid’s perception of what a strong adult should look and act like. It’s a great choice, Johnson clearly relishing the opportunity to actually act and putting everything into it, and there is something properly gripping about watching a megastar start to disappear – if only slightly, his size and off-screen experience with combat sports still making this a Dwayne Johnson Role – behind a character.
Though underserved, Blunt also gets to ask The Smashing Machine’s most needling question as the also pretty immature Dawn – is it worth your boyfriend getting sober if his addicted self finds it so much easier to unquestioningly love you? Safdie never gives a clear answer, letting this conundrum linger like an illness – he’s admirably unwilling to bow to sports-movie cliches, even if their absence does mean that there isn’t a grand emotional crescendo to truly hold on to. Just as he and his brother had Kevin Garnett playing himself in Uncut Gems, Safdie populates his supporting cast with actual MMA fighters, most notably Ryan Bader as Kerr’s best friend and trainer Mark Coleman. Though he never comes close to Garnett’s shockingly brilliant screen presence, Bader makes a passable first foray into acting, and the sheer size of him and his fellow ensemble fighters is crucial in selling this mad world to us.
The fights themselves are personal and brutal and over in a flash, sudden bursts of chaos and traumatic head injuries to punctuate Safdie’s retro, verité style that does really bring you into the late ‘90s, helped along by an intriguing score from Nala Sinephro. From Johnson’s lead performance to the glittering scuzziness of Maceo Bishop’s cinematography, The Smashing Machine is built out of a collection of individually impressive parts that, thanks to a central absence of gripping drama, can’t ever coalesce into something remarkable.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 