“Feigns sincerity in favour of spectacle.”

A glance at Mark Kerr – whether during his peak or in recent years – makes it very clear that he is not a man who should be challenged. Widely considered one of the pioneers of mixed martial arts and one of the first major names to popularise the UFC style of combat sports, Kerr has had quite a career, even if his name is mostly only known by those who take an active interest in the sport. Someone who does seem to have quite an interest in the material is Benny Safdie, who makes his solo directorial debut with The Smashing Machine. The film follows Kerr’s rise to fame in the late 1990s, attempting to condense a few years of his career into a relatively simple biographical format, oscillating between his public persona and his personal domestic life in an effort to paint a portrait of someone who appears to be quite a complex individual. However, it soon becomes apparent that this film is not going to redefine the genre, being yet another middling entry into the steadily growing canon of biographical sports dramas that take a figure who is supposedly a master of their chosen pastime and explore their lives over a particular period in time.  A film that is about as exciting in practice as it is in theory, The Smashing Machine is the very definition of lacklustre, a wholly mediocre and frankly quite dull film that feigns sincerity in favour of spectacle, remaining ineffective from all conceivable angles.

Something that becomes clear from the start is that Kerr’s story, while interesting as far as following his journey to overcome addiction and his rise to fame, is not fertile ground for a highly stylised account of his life. As a result, Safdie is forced to work with material that doesn’t leave much room for creativity, especially since it’s apparent that whatever conflict is used to propel the story forward would need to be slightly manufactured to give the illusion of a more tense, confrontational approach to his past. Despite being quite gifted as a filmmaker (although he had been paired with his brother in all previous directorial outings), Safdie brings very little imagination to this film, settling for the same trite conventions we always find in sports biographies and adding nothing we have not seen before on countless occasions. The expectations we had for this film being directed by someone who has helmed several tremendously original works, are extinguished almost immediately once we realise that it’s more adherent to the traditional playbook of sports dramas than it is to anything even vaguely subversive or daring. Each moment is predictable, and can be anticipated from the start – the rise and fall and eventual redemption of a man who allowed his vanity and pursuit of greatness to distract him from the parts of life that truly matter, rendered without even an ounce of originality and frankly disappointing for a director who has been willing to push boundaries in the past.

A former wrestler seeking out a secondary career in a field that he believes he has the strength and tenacity to conquer, despite various obstacles that stand in his way – the fact that Dwayne Johnson was enlisted to bring Kerr’s story to life is so notably reflective of his own career aspirations. While his acting talents are sometimes polarising, it is clear that Johnson does want to be taken seriously as a performer, and there are not many roles for an actor like him (despite some relatively decent performances in the past that showed that there is more to him than just the hulking physique), which helps us understand why he was wholeheartedly invested in seeing this project coming to fruition. Unfortunately, intent doesn’t match execution, and The Smashing Machine is an over-bloated, inauthentic affair that attempts to position itself as some revelatory moment in Johnson’s journey towards legitimacy, but certainly does not succeed in the way it intended. Whatever paltry qualities he has exhibited in the past that have led people to believe he’s a talented actor are absent here, and instead he is straining to be taken seriously, playing a character that is just a thinly veiled version of the same persona he has been using as his modus operandi for nearly twenty years. He is paired with Emily Blunt, undoubtedly an effort to give this film an additional layer of seriousness – but when she is underused to the point where it feels more like a personal favour than a performance, the problems with this film become even more evident.

At no point in The Smashing Machine do we ever understand why this project was supposed to be intriguing – Kerr’s story is interesting, but not enough to account for such a shallow, uninspired biographical drama. The tension is almost non-existent, and we’re instead thrown a bundle of overly dense emotions, none of which seem all that compelling, nor do they contribute to any of the conflict that supposedly drives this story forward. A radically different approach should have been taken – a documentary based around Kerr might have been far more effective, or if they were intent on going the route of a dramatisation of his life, a more satirical take could have fared better, especially since it would have given them the chance to explore the outrageous world of MMA fighting without resorting to the same bundle of clichés that always populate these films. It does nothing new, and feels somewhat regressive, the perspective being limited by a story that is simply not all that compelling. In fact, the only part of this film that felt inspired was having the final scene performed by Kerr himself – but in this simple act of subverting conventions, Safdie unintentionally criticises his own work, since we realise just how badly the film missed the mark in capturing the essence of this man. It’s perhaps not appropriate to just dismiss The Smashing Machine as a vanity project for Johnson (in spite of his flaws, he does put in the effort – but doing the bare minimum for once in his career is not an immediate cause for celebration), but it’s a thoroughly mediocre attempt at telling a story that deserved at least something resembling a new perspective and at least a partially compelling narrative.