“The Smashing Machine” was one of the most ballyhooed motion picture releases of 2025, but its theatrical run came and went with nary a whimper. Now that it’s made it to home video, was its calculated marketing nothing more than hot air, or is there something beneath its failed box office rubble worth sifting through?
Across his nearly 30 years in the public eye, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has been many things. In the late ‘90s he was one of the fastest growing stars in professional wrestling history, his charisma so palpable it catapulted him into mainstream success as an actor. But becoming the biggest movie star in the world wasn’t enough. He also had to become a brand unto himself, the preeminent Girl Dad, the poster boy for extravagant cheat meals to distract from his fitness routine likely including unnatural enhancements.
Across his nearly 30 years in the public eye, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has been many things.
Then, in 2022, he attempted a coup of Warner Bros’ DC Universe franchise with “Black Adam,” a film that underperformed so badly he reluctantly returned to the WWE, a place he has always been able to return to and reassert his dominance. But the landscape there had changed and he was no longer a returning hero, but was forced by fan sentiment into playing a villain role. With his name no longer drawing the same box office dollars it once had, Johnson chose to pivot from commerce to art.
“The Smashing Machine,” his collaboration with writer/director Benny Safdie, one half of the Safdie brothers who gave us “Good Time” and “Uncut Gems,” was intended to be the first page of a new chapter for Johnson, one where he could hide any financial shortcomings under the guise of producing the kind of films that don’t have to make money because they win awards and critical plaudits.
Based on the HBO documentary of the same name, the film stars Johnson as MMA legend Mark Kerr, charting a course through his early career and exploring his substance abuse issues. The trailers sold a big sports drama where a gifted athlete is brought to his lowest point before rising like a phoenix to win a big competition in the final act. But the resulting film is something altogether different.
It’s clear that the inspiration Safdie found in Kerr’s life moved him to create a strange and off-kilter portrait, an intimate character drama about Kerr’s on-again, off-again relationship with Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt). Having previously worked together on big-budget Disney adventure flick “Jungle Cruise,” Johnson and Blunt have a laudable chemistry, but the real life individuals they play are being captured on screen during a difficult time in their lives.
As Kerr’s stature begins to grow, Staples feels pushed to the periphery of his life, scratching at the edges of his world, fighting to get in. But there’s a level of toxicity on either side of the partnership, ample kindling for a fire that Kerr’s dependence on opioids sets aflame. He has to figure out how to balance newfound sobriety with a partner who begins to resent his hermetically sealed approach to processing emotions. The film takes the audience on a journey wondering whether their love is built to last and if Kerr can stay clean for the comeback fight of his life.
There’s just two major problems with all that. The first is that the narrative is true to the real events to a fault. The film’s final act is a major stinker, but that’s largely because there’s nothing satisfying about its dramatic conclusions — or rather, there’s not much drama in the way it chooses to end. It may have been unfair to authenticity and accuracy to alter real life happenings to better fit the accepted arc of the sports biography, but it also might have been a lot less deflating than what we’re given here.
The other issue is that Johnson has loudly and prolifically announced this role as a drastic departure from what we’ve come to expect of him on screen. But is it? He’s a bulked up mass of muscles fighting in a ring for thousands of people. The only difference between mixed martial arts and professional wrestling is that the latter is predetermined. This isn’t some big Daniel Day-Lewis-esque transformation. Going into this movie, all the bombast around him being a “serious” actor now puts undue strain on a performance that is otherwise one of his most affecting yet.
It doesn’t help matters that Benny’s brother, Josh, has a huge awards season contender on his hands with “Marty Supreme,” a less conventional sports film starring Timothée Chalamet as an ambitious ping-pong player in 1950s New York City. Chalamet’s press run for the film has been even bigger than Johnson’s, seeing the young star push his product more aggressively than most of his peers. Both men have garnered Best Actor nominations from the Golden Globes, Johnson for Drama and Chalamet for Musical or Comedy. But the awards prognosticators have Chalamet as a lock for the Oscars when those nominations come near the end of the month, with the chances of Johnson slipping into the mix near to none.
It doesn’t take long into “The Smashing Machine” to see why Safdie wanted to make this film the way that he did. There’s a fascinating quality to Johnson’s portrayal of Kerr. In the film’s opening scene, moments after we have watched this brolic mass of a man dole out unconscionable brutality in the ring, he seems to flip a switch back to absolute sincerity, turning to the referee wanting to make sure his felled opponent is OK, seeming like he wants to go over and hug him after nearly ending his life. It carries over into a scene in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, Kerr waiting to get new pills and insisting to a sweet elderly woman that the fighters harbor no malice or hatred for one another, that he can hold space for loving his fellow man while being paid to pummel others.
That central contradiction is present in everything else about the film, from its atmosphere and music choices to the way it’s shot and edited. The gossamer beauty of the 16mm film grain is contrasted with the tape loop strangeness of the VHS-shot sequences; a docudrama seriousness to the shouting matches between Kerr and Staples at odds with the fairy tale tone in some of Kerr’s moments of solitude before competing.
“The Smashing Machine” doesn’t stick the landing and its matter-of-fact ending feels at odds with its ethereal and bewildering nature up to that point. But it is interesting to behold. Perhaps if Johnson wants to make more work in this vein he ought to let his craft speak for itself and not treat it in the hollow, contrived way he does the rest of his brand management.
“The Smashing Machine” is available to rent or own on VOD.