The Smashing Machine Review

The Smashing Machine Review

This weekend the first film where The Rock is trying to prove himself as a great actor comes out and it’s called The Smashing Machine. This is a film I’ve been very excited to see just because I’m very curious to see if The Rock can work giving a dramatic performance. Did he? Is the movie any good? Let’s talk about it!

The Good

Cutting right to the chase, the big question that myself and others were most curious about with this film. Is Dwayne Johnson able to deliver a dramatic transformative performance? Is this a solid start to his new career path of doing more dramatic films? Yes and kind of. Dwayne Johnson is one of the biggest movie stars of the last 15 years. He’s constantly been in hit films in hit franchises and in total have grossed an enormous amount of money. There’s been a bit of discussion of The Rock just playing himself in every movie. People have said that you can swap his character in Red One with his character in Jumanji and the movie wouldn’t change. You watch this film and you don’t see any of The Rock’s normal personality or charm that he brings to his movies. At points you’re watching the film and sort of in disbelief that it’s actually The Rock. It helps when he’s in prosthetics and it’s hard to recognize him. In fact when Mark Kerr (the character he’s playing) is bald he looks more unrecognizable then when he has hair which is just kind of funny considering The Rock is famous for not having hair. Regardless he’s playing a person that has a lot of different qualities about him, both good and bad. At points he’s having to be in love with Emily Blunt’s character, he’s frustrated with Emily Blunt’s character, he’s frustrated with himself, with the rules, and he also just wants to be a charming guy that’s kind with his fans, friends, opponents. There’s so much that he has to do and he’s able to commit and do it all. The thing people are wondering now is, what this performance will look like come awards season. Will The Rock get an Oscar nomination? Is he going to be nominated anywhere else? If it was up to me, I’d say yes, The Rock deserves the nomination. He deserves it because it’s so different from everything else that we’ve seen him do and because he’s so known for the opposite of this, he deserves it. I think he deserves it in a similar way that Brendan Fraser deserved the Oscar nomination for The Whale. 

Another thing about the film is the look and feel of it. The film starts off by letting the audience know that it’s set from 1997 to 2000. The film looks like it came out during that time period. The director, Benny Safdie talked about how it’s not a traditional biopic. This isn’t a film where we see Mark Kerr has a child and it ends with seeing him where he is today. It literally takes place over the course of four years. I say that as a positive now and I’ll talk about it more in the negative section. The film feels like a documentary about Mark Kerr’s life, with how the camera is positioned and how it moves feels like you’re a fly on the wall watching all of this unfold. There’s something interesting about that, it makes the film feel different from other sports biopics. It’s not about the ups and downs of his career, but you do get that in this film. The film is produced and distributed by A24. They aren’t a normal film studio, they aren’t putting out $200 million blockbusters they’re putting out smaller more interesting films and that’s what The Smashing Machine. It’s taking a genre that we’re very familiar with and doing something different with it. The mix of A24’s style and Benny Safdie’s direction makes all of that happen. 

Also some of the supporting performances in the film are good. None of them are as good or ground breaking as The Rock, but they do a solid job. The leading lady of the film, Mark Kerr’s girlfriend, is played by Emily Blunt. She’s one of my favorite actresses and she’s continuing to show off her acting abilities. She’s able to go toe to toe with The Rock who gives a great performance. The Rock and Blunt’s relationship in the film is very toxic, both of their characters can be very unlikable at points. When the two of them are arguing and fighting you really feel the emotion of it because both of them are giving it their all. The surprise performance here is Ryan Bader as Mark Kerr’s friend. His character is probably the most likeable one in this film as he’s the glue holding our two leads together. He’s a genuinely good person that’s there to help them when they need it. Once again, he’s not going to be in the awards conversation. For the role he’s given with the limited screen time I think he does a solid job and brought this levity to the film. 

Finally, I thought the soundtrack for the film was surprisingly effective and a lot more memorable than I thought it was going to be. I looked at the composer for the film while I was writing this and this was his first ever film that he scored and he does a really good job. It’s not the most bombastic or energetic score of all time, but for what the film requires I think it works well. There’s even a number of songs that play in the film that are good songs. They use “My Way” by Frank Sinatra over a montage that works nicely. 

The Bad

Unfortunately, while there were a lot of things about the film I enjoyed there were also a number of things that left me very frustrated. The big thing here is I felt like the film had compelling scenes and moments, but it didn’t have an interesting story connecting all of them together. It reminds me of my issue with Ridley Scott’s Napoleon. I went into that film not really knowing much about Napoleon and I left the film not really knowing much about Napoleon. Because that film had great scenes but not a compelling story connecting those scenes. When I watched The Smashing Machine, I kind of felt the same thing, a film that works in individual scenes but doesn’t work as a whole. I didn’t know who Mark Kerr was prior to watching the film and leaving it, I don’t feel like I fully understood who he was. Maybe some of it is that they chose such a specific window of Kerr’s life to explore. The film is really focused on two fights, the tournament fighting and the fighting with his girlfriend. We’re either seeing him as the fighter or as a boyfriend, we don’t really see much of day to day life. We don’t get to see him be happy a lot in this film, we see him stressed for most of the film. Part of the problem connected with this, is the film feels like there’s scenes missing that feel important to the film. The film sets up the idea of Kerr’s addiction to opioids, which it’s introduced as something very minor but then scenes later will have big impacts on his life but you don’t feel it because the scenes of him being addicted were cut. The emotional scene that comes from the consequence of him being addicted means nothing. There’s stuff with Emily Blunt’s character in the third act of the film that comes out of nowhere. The film goes in some very dark places with her character but it felt like scenes that were setting that up were cut. It feels like they had a version of this film that was 2 ½ to 3 hours long. Had the film been longer then I think it would’ve been a lot better. 

I think Emily Blunt’s character is the big victim of scenes being cut out. I just touched on the idea of scenes with her in the back half feeling pointless. But she’s not really given much to do in the film. All of her scenes are with The Rock and she’s constantly being this nervous, whiny, scared character and she’s stuck in these emotions from beginning to end. When the film played at Venice Film Festival a lot of the reviews coming out of it were saying that Emily Blunt was underused. When you watch the film, I agree with them. The only reason why she’s memorable is because Emily Blunt is an actress that I enjoy. I know that she’s based on a real person so you can’t change the details about her. But I wish they found some way to give her more to do so that way she’s not playing the same character from beginning to end. She was the aspect of the film that I left feeling the most frustrated with because there’s an interesting character that I felt was bogged down by the film’s other problems. 

Finally, the final note that the film ends on with what it shows I don’t think was the best way to end the film. I get what they were doing and it’s cool that they showed it but it felt awkward as the ending of the film. I think it’s footage that could’ve been shown during the credits like how most biopics do. 

Final Thoughts: The Smashing Machine was one of my most anticipated films of Fall 2025. There’s absolutely a lot of things about this film that I really enjoyed. The Rock shows that he’s more than just a movie star, he can act and portray a lot of different emotions at the same time. Unfortunately, I don’t think the film is as good as it could’ve and should’ve been. There’s moments in here that really work, but it didn’t find a compelling story to tie all of these events together. I’m very curious to see what the film’s reception is going to be after this weekend because I can see it being very polarizing, some people are going to love and others are going to be like me and be frustrated. 

The Score: 8.1/10 (B-)