Dwayne Johnson sheds the blockbuster armour in ‘The Smashing Machine’, Benny Safdie’s bruising new film
Venice Film Festival premiere reveals a different side of the star, in a performance that’s already generating awards buzz.
There was a moment, just after the credits rolled at the Venice premiere of The Smashing Machine, when Dwayne Johnson stood completely still. Then the applause began. It kept going—louder, longer—until the former WWE star, action hero, and global franchise anchor began to cry.
The ovation, reportedly lasting over 15 minutes, wasn’t just a response to celebrity. It was something else: recognition of a performance very few people expected. Johnson, in his most stripped-back and emotionally raw role to date, disappears into the part of Mark Kerr, a troubled legend of the early days of mixed martial arts. The film, directed by Benny Safdie in his solo debut, follows Kerr during his chaotic rise in the late 1990s, when he dominated UFC and PRIDE while quietly unravelling under the weight of addiction, self-denial, and painkillers.
Early reviews from Venice suggest Johnson’s performance may not only mark a turning point in his career—it may also put him in serious awards-season contention. Words like “unrecognisable”, “fragile”, and “scarily unstable” appear again and again in coverage from Variety, BBC Culture, The Hollywood Reporter and IndieWire.
Safdie’s film—his first since co-directing Uncut Gems with brother Josh—is as unorthodox as its subject. It resists the familiar rhythms of sports biopics. There are no training montages, no championship belt climaxes. Kerr’s story is messy, unresolved. A giant in the cage and a shell of a man outside it.
Johnson reportedly dropped nearly 60 pounds for the role and worked with prosthetic specialist Kazu Hiro to match Kerr’s weary, swollen face. But the physical transformation is only part of it. This isn’t an actor doing an impression; it’s someone digging underneath a persona that’s long been defined by charm, control, and invincibility. In The Smashing Machine, those traits fall away.
The performance plays with silence as much as strength. Johnson shows us a man caught between public brutality and private collapse—a “machine” built to hurt others, increasingly unsure if he’s worth saving himself. Critics have compared his quiet intensity to Cassavetes-era antiheroes. At one point, Kerr tells reporters that winning feels “like being a god”. Not long after, he’s slumped on the floor of a hotel bathroom, shivering and numb.
Emily Blunt, who stars as Kerr’s girlfriend Dawn Staples, gives a performance that’s as slippery and complicated as Johnson’s. She isn’t the saintly support character we’ve come to expect in these stories. Instead, she’s an equal force—erratic, co-dependent, often destructive in her own right. Their scenes together bristle with volatility. The love between them is real, but it’s the kind that corrodes.
Much of the film is shot with an observational eye—gritty, grainy, and often verging on documentary. Safdie used the same cameras once employed by PRIDE FC in the late ’90s, lending the fight scenes a crackling realism. But violence isn’t the point here. Kerr’s most painful battles happen in the quiet, in the aftermath.
The script avoids sermonising about addiction. There’s no sweeping moral arc. Instead, it offers something more textured—a collage of moments, conversations, withdrawals, relapses. Johnson’s portrayal of drug dependency is understated and deeply physical. His energy dims. His presence recedes. It’s disturbing precisely because it’s so unforced.
Critics are already calling it the best work of his career. Nicholas Barber of BBC Culture praised Johnson’s “impressively vulnerable” turn, while Variety’s Owen Gleiberman said the actor “seems like a new person”. IndieWire called the film “nimbly executed and oddly endearing”, even as it veers away from traditional structure.
There are flaws. Some reviewers have pointed to gaps in the screenplay, or to a narrative that can feel too abstract for its own good. But few dispute the film’s power—or its ambition. For a star whose image has long been meticulously maintained, The Smashing Machine feels like a deliberate act of self-disruption.
Elena Leo is the Arts & Lifestyle Editor of Ikon London Magazine.
