The Smashing Machine

The Smashing Machine is a biographical sports drama written, directed, and edited by Benny Safdie, marking his first solo directorial feature away from his brother Josh. It stars Dwayne Johnson in a startling dramatic departure as Mark Kerr, the pioneering mixed-martial-arts champion who dominated the sport's brutal early days in the late 1990s. Produced by A24, the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where Safdie won the Silver Lion for Best Director.

The film charts Kerr's rise through the no-holds-barred world of early mixed martial arts and Japan's Pride Fighting Championships, while unsparingly documenting the toll of that life: a spiraling dependence on painkillers, a near-fatal overdose, and a volatile relationship with his partner Dawn, played by Emily Blunt. Johnson, buried under prosthetics and physically transformed, strips away his movie-star charisma to portray a gentle giant whose hardest battles happen outside the ring. Real-life fighters including Ryan Bader and Bas Rutten appear alongside him, lending the fight world a documentary authenticity.

Reviews singled out Johnson's raw, vulnerable performance as a career high and a genuine awards-season talking point, even as the film struggled commercially, posting the lowest opening weekend of his career. Shot on a mix of film formats to evoke the era, it stands as one of the most ambitious swings of Johnson's career. The Smashing Machine is streaming on HBO Max.