The Smashing Machine: Film Review

Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine paints a vivid portrait of Mark Kerr’s turbulent career, but its deeper story is nothing we haven’t seen before.

The film centers around the life of Mark Kerr, one of the pioneering names in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. But you’d be forgiven for not recognizing the name; The Smashing Machine takes great care to paint Kerr as a kind of forgotten hero, whose contribution to the sport has been overwritten by history. The film follows his career through highs and lows, detailing his most accomplished moments while his domestic life crumbles behind the scenes under the weight of substance abuse and mental health crises.

What’s most striking about The Smashing Machine, in comparison to other sports biopics in the same vein, is how effectively it manages to portray the detrimental effects of professional sports on the rest of one’s life. Kerr is a true hero of UFC, but to reach that status, he had to sacrifice everything: his marriage, his publicity – even his body. The Smashing Machine does an excellent job of showing the audience this tragic journey, but the film stops short of actually saying much beyond the objective facts.

Unlike many biopics in this genre, The Smashing Machine at least manages to justify its own existence and prove why this film needed to be made. Kerr is a pioneering figure whose success has been buried under the trophies of those who followed him, and Benny Safdie clearly wants the world to know about this remarkable sportsman. He’s out to make a point: the sports industry is lethal, and if you don’t sacrifice everything you’ve got, it will eat you and spit you out.

However, Safdie’s screenplay is far too generic and familiar to actually get this message across. It’s filled with stereotypes of the genre; whether that’s the tortured celebrity whose family doesn’t understand him, or the ambitious warrior whose tough-guy persona is more of a defence mechanism than a natural instinct. These aren’t new ideas, and the result is that The Smashing Machine feels far too familiar and uninventive in a genre that’s already oversaturated. 

But if The Smashing Machine fails to succeed at being original, it certainly succeeds at being well-made. Safdie’s direction is very intimate and tight, almost paying homage to the chaotic handheld movements of Uncut Gems, in a way that immediately gives the audience a route into the most personal corners of these characters’ lives. This continues throughout the film, with the visuals and the jazzy score growing more and more unstable as Kerr’s story (and health) unravels, giving the film a very immersive and dizzying effect.

Perhaps the biggest talking point of The Smashing Machine will be Dwayne Johnson’s lead performance, which is admittedly his best work to date. His physical and behavioral transformation into Mark Kerr is excellent, and Johnson’s work is much more restrained and nuanced than audiences will be used to. However, it’s actually Emily Blunt who steals the show as his wife Dawn, turning in a much louder and more frenzied performance that carefully walks the line between simply being “big” and doing too much.

Ultimately, The Smashing Machine is a very well-made movie that applies Benny Safdie’s acclaimed style of chaotic storytelling to a more accessible, sterilized story for general audiences. It’s clearly a vehicle for Johnson’s transformative performance – and it’s definitely one to watch out for when the awards race picks up in a few months – but the film lacks the ambition and rule-breaking spirit that makes Mark Kerr such an indomitable figure in the first place.

The Smashing Machine had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 1, 2025. The film will be released in U.S. theaters, in U.K. & Irish cinemas and globally in theatres on October 3, 2025.