In one of the year’s most surprising pairings, Dwayne Johnson and indie icon Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems, Good Time) team up in The Smashing Machine, the powerful story of pioneering mixed martial arts/UFC fighter Mark Kerr.
The Garden Cinema View:
Winner of the Silver Lion for Best Director for Benny Safdie (and a 15 minute standing ovation) at the Venice Film Festival, The Smashing Machine takes an unconventional and refreshing approach for a sports biopic.
Shot with documentary-like realism (handheld camera, zooms, 16mm film), Safdie's first solo directorial effort recounts the joys and sorrows of MMA legend Mark Kerr, played, like we‘ve never seen him before, by Dwayne Johnson. Johnson, often associated with roles of invincibility and strength, becomes here a fragile anti-hero.
Safdie transforms Kerr’s professional bouts and personal struggles into a visual poem of falls and resurrections, of rings and hotel rooms, of applause and silence. There are no triumphant celebrations of epic victories, on the contrary the fights are moments of alienation, and the camera lingers more on the pauses than on the blows.
With the role of his life, Johnson is a serious Oscar contender as Mark ‘The Smashing Machine’ Kerr.
