Dwayne Johnson’s A24 Sports Movie is a Total Bust

The Hype Surrounding The Smashing Machine Has Been Astronomical and for Good Reason. IT’S BENNY SAFDIE’S FIRST SOLO Directorial EFFORT AFTER WORKING WITH HIS BROTHER LOSE ON ACCLAIMED HITS LIKE Good and Uncut gems. Rumors of a massive budget make it a post -blying one of the most expensively films a24 has ever made a makes a flush for bigger films in General. And It ‘dwayne Johnson’s Big Oscar Vehicle, The Box Office Giant’s First Stab at a Truly Serious Role.

To get in the headspace of former UFC Fighter Mark Kerr, Johnson Has Transformed and Spoken Often How Tapping into this Role Brought Him to a Vulnerable State Hasn’t Explored in His Career. The Big Question Out of the Film’s Venice Premiere was, does it all work? The Answer is no.

The Smashing Machine is Too Sedate to Be Thrling

Nor a sports biopic, The Smashing Machine is unconventional in some ways. IT Opts not for an expansive look at Kerr’s Entire Life, but focuses instead on the three years – From 1997 to 2000 – Where Addiction Almost Rur’s Life and the Fighter Had an oversseas gig in a japanese Called pride. Still, safdie, who also wrote the script, can’t help but fall into some of the genre’s trappings, with training montages and more used to middling.

To his Credit, Johnson’s Performance is absolutely fine, though it is Certainly not revelatory. The idea of ​​casting the world’s Most Famous Wrestler-Turned-Actor in the role of Kerr is arguably more fascinating than the performance or the film itelf. That said, it is johnson’s best roles to date, giving the actor a chance to bite into meaty material that has Has otherwise avoided through much of His career.

Blunt is in the role of the thankless, underdeveloped love interest, but she truly shines as dawn, the eventual wife. In one of the film’s domestic fight scens (which are more thriling than anything that take place place in the ring), dawn shouts at mark that he “doesn’t know her.“We did not really know her, eather – at the least not on any sort of intimate level beyond her relation with the Star of the Show. Still, BLUNT IMBES DAKES WITH A SENSE OF HUMANY MAKES HER STAND, FLOWS AND ALL.

Safdie’s Direction Adds A Layer of Intimacy That HIS Script Does Not, and it Certainly Evokes Past Collaborations with HIS Brother, but there’s a stagnance to the gives The Smashing Machine An overall Lack of Energy, Eve During Its Mont Brutal Moment. This all builds to an anticlimactic conflict that, while presumably true to real events, nonetheless feels underwhelming.

Underneath all these flaws lies a good film. IT’s not that The Smashing Machine Is Even Bad. ITH’S JUST THAT IT FALLS SO SHORT OF ITS Potential and Has a Starting Lack of Energy for A Film About Men Beating Each Other Senseless. Its best moments in the octagon – they’re in the quiet moments when johnson’s kerr is talking to an interviewing backstage or mark are exchanging barbs in between affections in their cozy Arizona Home.

The best sports biopics are about about overcoming near-intersurmoutable odds, and kerr Certainly did and time again. Johnson, Too, Has Done the Same, Transitioning from A Wrestling Star to a Serious Actor. But it is clear that to go furnace, he need better material to transcend. At the end of the day, The Smashing Machine Still Reverts to Familiarity Rather than Pushing The Needle, and Is Clear That Everyone Involved Can Better.

The Smashing Machine Screened at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. A24 Will Release the Film in theaters on October 3.

Release Date

October 3, 2025

Runtime

123 minutes

Directory

Benny Safdie

Wriers

Benny Safdie

Producers

Beau Flynn, David Koplan, Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia, Hiram Garcia