Rating: R | Runtime: 123 minutes
Release Date: October 3rd, 2025 (USA)
Studio: A24
Director(s): Benny Safdie
Writer(s): Benny Safdie

A day without pain is like a day without sunshine.

The Mark Kerr on-screen in Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine is a fascinating, soulful, lovable character who proves why he deserves a biopic beyond just his place as an MMA pioneer. I’m just not sure the vérité nature that made Good Time and Uncut Gems so iconic works to get the job done. It’s one thing to use that technique in an intense but brief timeframe. It’s another to do so with a sprawling drama splitting focus onto two more characters over three years.

I feel like I didn’t really learn much about any of them beyond surface personalities and quick bursts of extreme emotion. I really wanted to dig into what appeared like OCD as far as Kerr’s compulsion for instructions to be meticulously followed—something that spills into his inability to cope with losing when losing was never (logically or not) in his plans. But we just move right to the next check stop. The next fight that feels compiled of b-roll documentary footage (John Hyams, director of a 2002 doc of the same name, is a consulting producer here) set to a quiet, jazzy score.

Issues with the script and pacing aside, I did think the period aesthetic was excellent. This thing looks phenomenal. And while we all knew Emily Blunt could elevate material to the point where performance outshines its narrative use, I was very impressed by Dwayne Johnson proving just as capable. Man, was he great. Justifiably yet mournfully tempestuous. Infectiously and inspirationally jubilant. He owns every single frame.

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Dwayne Johnson in THE SMASHING MACHINE; courtesy of Eric Zachanowich.