There is genuine pain, both physical and emotional, in Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, a film that substitutes triumph with tremor and spectacle with solitude. It’s not a boxing movie in the conventional sense, though it wears the marks of one. It’s a biography of a man who smashes bones for money and who struggles not to tear apart the people he loves.
A restrained and disguised Dwayne Johnson stars as Mark Kerr, a man who has already won too much. The victories come early; they come often. The movie never shows these highs; it only shows the letdown. When Kerr loses to Igor Vovchanchyn in a split decision, the defeat seeps into Kerr’s bloodstream, his marriage, and the silent places of his recovery. The smashing machine isn’t simply his nickname — it’s his state of being. Kerr is torn down. The film portrays the struggles to rebuild himself.
Safdie bypasses the genre’s familiar choreography. The fights are remote, almost clinical. Safdie’s camera remains outside the ropes, afraid to broach that space. The score, by Nala Sinephro, hums with a sense of alienation. It mourns. The power of the film lies in its pauses — in how Kerr looks at his hands, how he hesitates before entering a room where his girlfriend and soon-to-be wife, Dawn Staples, waits.
As Dawn, Emily Blunt generates a wounded vulnerability. She is the movie’s provocation. Johnson’s and Blunt’s scenes together are jagged, redundant, and exhausting. She requires more of him than he can provide, and he demands peace more than can be had. The film does not take sides. It simply watches the erosion. Their love is not redemptive. It is radioactive.
There are times when the movie pulls way from its center, loses focus. Safdie’s preference for character over structure leaves the film curiously lumpy, shapeless in quality. The film’s second half constantly recirculates the same emotional drain. And yet there are moments — low-key ones — when the film recovers its pulse. Ryan Bader, as Mark Coleman, gives the movie some needed warmth. The Smashing Machine’s best scenes are those between him and Kerr—the ones not about fighting, but surviving.
The title reveals itself slowly. The smashing machine is more than just Kerr’s body. It is his life. It is the system that fêtes violence and punishes vulnerability. It’s the house he can’t build. It’s his love he can’t touch. It is the loneliness that haunts him, even in triumph.
Ultimately, The Smashing Machine is a hit-and-miss movie. It fails in its pacing, as well as in its unwillingness to mold its story. However, the performances land with honesty and pain. It is not Raging Bull, but something quieter, sadder, and less sure of itself. And that uncertainty is its beauty.
Grade: B+.
Leave a Reply