The wrestler turned Hollywood superstar gets vulnerable in this bruising indie drama about mixed martial arts fighting. He’s “touching” and could well be nominated for awards.
Dwayne Johnson may not use his professional wrestling nickname on his film credits, but every time he’s on the big screen, it still feels appropriate to call him The Rock. That’s how sturdy he seems to be. It’s not just that his heroic characters can shrug off punishment that would pulverise the rest of us, it’s also that they grin pearly white grins while they’re doing so. Johnson’s Hollywood career is built on the impression he gives of being indestructible. The Smashing Machine, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival today, is our first opportunity to see that The Rock can crumble.
An arthouse dramatisation of a 2002 HBO documentary, this sensitive film tells the true story of Mark Kerr, a mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter who was a pioneer of the bloodily violent sport in the years before its champions were rich and famous. Johnson is probably the only actor alive who could play Kerr convincingly: his colossal, sculpted bulk fills the screen, and because he has a full head of hair for a change, his towering appearance raises the question of why Marvel used CGI for the Hulk in the Avengers films. If they had just painted Johnson bright green, they could have saved themselves a lot of bother.
As mountainous and, well, rock-like as its protagonist looks, though, this downbeat indie film is about someone who can be hurt, both physically and emotionally. In the opening sequence, set in 1997, Kerr radiates youthful confidence as he bashes his opponents’ faces to pulp. (“A knee to the face,” marvels a commentator. “A magnificent knee to the face!”) But when The Smashing Machine jumps forward to 1999, the years of violence have already taken their toll – and not just on his newly mangled ear.
Because MMA isn’t yet a sensation in the US, Kerr does much of his fighting in Japan, where he feels lonely and alienated: some scenes are redolent of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, not that anyone is likely to mistake Johnson for Bill Murray. The slog of travelling between Japan and his home in Arizona leads to arguments with his girlfriend Dawn, played by Emily Blunt (the film is quite a contrast with Johnson and Blunt’s last team-up, Disney’s Jungle Cruise, in 2021). And he sweet-talks pharmacists into giving him stronger and stronger drugs, partly to dull the agony of all those punches to his head, and partly to approximate “the highest of highs” he feels when he wins a bout. He would be finished without the loyal support of his best friend Mark Coleman (real-life MMA star Ryan Bader), but as both of the Marks are MMA fighters, there is always the prospect that they will have to assault each other in the ring sooner or later.
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