The End of Rock Slop: The Smashing Machine Review
Ross Paterson
A minor but notable talking point this award season has been The Academy’s alleged ‘snubbing’ of Dwayne (‘The Rock’) Johnson’s first attempt at a serious film performance. Over a career spanning a quarter of a century, Johnson has spawned an impressively expansive genre of lukewarm action movies — coined “Rock Slop” by one video essayist. Previous titles such as Journey 2 the Mysterious Island (not an Epstein biopic), Skyscraper and Jungle Cruise have ranged from forgettable to offensive.
The Smashing Machine — a biopic of legendary MMA athlete Mark Kerr — encompasses drug addiction, relationship breakdown and the violent, wild-west infancy of early MMA promotion, offering a sharp departure and tonal shift from Johnson’s previous filmography. When it comes to rehabilitating the stifled thespian ambitions of blockbuster mainstays, who better than Bennie Safdie, director behind Adam Sandler’s achievement in Uncut Gems?
Made almost unrecognisable by prosthetics, Johnson brings to life a surprisingly complex and melancholic figure in Kerr. The stark contrast between his savage, violent beatdowns in the ring and his gentlemanly, serene demeanour lends the film a layer of levity and occasional humour. It further augments the uncomfortable domestic breakdown between Mark and his partner, (Emily Blunt’s Dawn) which comprises the film’s emotional centre. Rather than a simple abuser-victim dynamic, Safdie portrays a mutually corrosive relationship, depicted without the moralistic judgment sometimes typical of other Oscar-bait biopics. The terrifying physicality of Kerr’s outbursts are matched by an equally destabilising Dawn. Blunt’s impressively natural performance drifts seamlessly from steadfastly supportive to destructively unhinged to quietly manipulative.
With films like The Wrestler (2008) and Warrior (2011) offering similar depictions of troubled combat athletes, The Smashing Machine’s subject matter is nothing novel. However, Safdie distinguishes himself in his depiction of the Wild West days of the UFC and its Japanese counterpart, Pride, in the nineties and early noughties. Far removed from today’s polished global spectacle, legality was blurred, fighter compensation was low, and the rulebook was still being formulated. Such instability catalyses the film’s central conflict, as confusion over rule changes, namely when Pride bans knee strikes to the head of a downed opponent, results in Kerr’s first career loss. This is later overturned to a “no contest”. The resulting crisis of confidence precipitates an emotional spiral into deeper opioid dependency and relationship tumult.
Johnson’s background as a professional wrestler, an industry similarly marred by painkiller addiction, steroid abuse and low life expectancy in its early days, no doubt informs the emotional architecture from which he draws. Surprisingly, former UFC fighter and Bellator heavyweight champion Ryan Bader can also act (kind of). He proves a credible, similarly hulking screen presence, co-starring as Kerr’s real-life coach, confidant and sporting rival Mark Coleman. I particularly enjoyed the tacit dynamic between the coldly sinister Japanese businessmen and their roided-up American circus freaks, where the brute physicality of Johnson and Bader juxtaposes awkward politeness and cramped interiors. This surrealism is heightened by an airy, dreamlike score that runs counter to the film’s brutality, lending it a magical realist quality.
The film’s climax sees Coleman ultimately triumph over Kerr in Pride’s heavyweight tournament. However, bland fight choreography and a sense of inevitability deprive this moment of the emotional crescendo promised by the preceding minutes. Its deliberately ambiguous ending, where Dawn and Kerr’s relationship status remains unresolved, also risks coming across as rather flat.
In terms of that Oscar nomination then, while the Smashing Machine produces nothing particularly new, it offers a tightly presented, introspective and visceral character study disguised as a sports biopic. Though not in itself sufficient reparations for the endless slop The Rock has churned out for 25 years, it is a fitting testament to two under-compensated pioneers of a sport which has grown into a global industry.
The Rock found out the hard way that one serious performance does not necessarily warrant immediate Academy recognition — perhaps for the best, given how unpredictable awards night can be, as Michael B. Jordan learned this year.
