Film Review: The Smashing Machine

 

Sexuality/Nudity Mature

Violence Mature

Vulgarity Mature

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature

Sometimes a movie has some fantastic elements, but they never coalesce into something great.  But the elements are so good, it is memorable.

That is the case with The Smashing Machine.

The movie is about Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson), one of the early pioneers of what would be come the UFC.  He is a mountain of muscle who gleefully beats his opponents to a pulp.  He lives with his girlfriend Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt).  Their relationship is rocky at best.  But as time goes on, the life takes its toll on Mark in so many ways. He struggles for work, develops an addiction to opioids, and he begins to decline from his dominance in the ring.  Slowly everything around him breaks down, but he is constantly supported by his friend Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader), a fellow down and out fighter.  But as Kerr hits bottom, he tries to rise above and make a comeback.

The thing that sticks out the most about this movie are the performances.  This is hands-down Dwayne Johnson's best performance.  The makeup job on him is so good that he is sometimes unrecognizable.  In his career, Johnson has leaned heavily on his natural charisma and it has gotten him far.  But here, he has to let go of most of those tricks and build a subtle, complex character.  His Mark Kerr is absolutely fascinating.  He is a savage in the ring.  But when he is in public he is so measured and gentle.  You can feel the realism of the performance, where Mark's size would scare people so he has to go out of his way to put people at ease.  But when his temper flares, its terrifying.  He is not an oversimplified gentle giant.  Instead, he is a shaken soda can with the cap ready to explode.

Blunt also gives a great performance.  It would be very easy for her Dawn to fall into melodrama as the put-upon, supportive girlfriend.  But the script doesn't devolve into sentiment and Blunt plays down surprisingly unsympathetically.   The antagonism between them is difficult to watch, but it also sparks strong performances.

Bader is also very good as Mark Coleman.  It is a very unvarnished performance that speaks about his character's simple decency.

Benny Safdie does a great job of directing the film to make it feel almost like a documentary.  The lighting and camera work give a the world a solid, realistic feel.  Sometimes it feels like you are watching real life fights and struggles.  Safdie also wrote the script and that is where the movie struggles.  The story is exhausting to watch.  While it draws you in, the longer it goes it becomes more punishing.  The plot structure doesn't give the payoff that the story sets up.  The conflict between Mark and Dawn is hurtful and it becomes less engaging as time goes on.  The further you go in the movie, the more you keep thinking "Why didn't they make the movie about Mark Coleman?"  His story fits the archetype of this story much better.

As a character study, it is still very interesting.  Mark is a weak man.  He is weak at the beginning of the movie even as he smashes his opponents into a pulp.  He just doesn't know he's weak until he begins to lose and then the cracks begin to show.  The slow breakdown he has after he loses his first fight is a wonderful marriage of raw cinematography and powerful acting.  But the film isn't able to sustain this level of artistry.  It just becomes too much.

One of the thing that I found edifying about the movie is that it modeled toxic relationships.  Mark and Dawn constantly snipe at each other.  They try to cover it with polite tones, but they go from passive aggressive to downright aggressive.  Their love may be all romance, but there is no charity.  They never look primarily for the good of the other.  In the end, they were two selfish people who try to take as much as they can from the other.  Mark may be addicted and violent, but that does not make Dawn into a hero. This movie made me appreciate the fact that my wife is filled with God's love and charity.  And it made me sad for all the people who don't know that kind of love.

After the move was over, I felt exhausted, almost like I was in the fight.  There are some truly great elements in it.  But The Smashing Machine never rises above so that it becomes greater than the sum of its parts.