Dwayne Johnson is well-known for his pro wrestling career, as well as being the smoldering action star in fun franchises like Jumanji and Fast & Furious, but his next project is a whole different animal. The Rock stars in A24’s The Smashing Machine, a biographical sports drama about MMA fighter Mark Kerr, and while I wasn’t sure what to expect from the actor in possibly his most interesting role yet, critics have me hyped with their comments from the Venice International Film Festival.
The Smashing Machine premiered at the film festival a month before it hits the 2025 movie calendar, and critics sure had a lot to say about the Benny Safdie movie that reunites Dwayne Johnson with Emily Blunt, who he starred alongside in 2021’s The Jungle Cruise. This movie was definitely not a Disney theme park ride, said Nicholas Barber of the BBC. In fact, don’t be surprised if we see Johnson’s name on the Oscars ballot, the critic says, rating the film 4 out of 5 stars and saying:
As mountainous and, well, rock-like as its protagonist looks, though, this downbeat indie film is about someone who can be hurt, both physically and emotionally. … Johnson is impressively vulnerable when Kerr is losing control of his life, and scarily unstable when he bickers with his Dawn – and he does plenty of bickering.
Ryan Lattanzio of IndieWire gives it a B+, calling the upcoming A24 movie “nimbly executed and oddly endearing,” though the critic disagrees that the story is awards fodder. Lattanzio writes that Benny Safdie uses those tropes to convey the gentle duet between Dwayne Johnson’s opioid-addicted fighter and his codependent girlfriend. In his words:
Johnson’s performance is out-and-out wonderful, a beady-eyed fusion of body and spirit that osmoses Safdie’s sensibility to deliver what can’t be disputed as the most layered work of the actor’s career. A vividly contradictory Blunt, funny and sad especially in articulating Dawn’s conflicted response to Mark’s post-rehab emotional about-face during a tense argument, is equally sensational.
Owen Gleiberman of Variety calls The Smashing Machine “bracing, clear-eyed, and laceratingly humane,” as Benny Safdie presents more of an intimate documentary — even using the same cameras PRIDE FC did in order to make the fights feel as real as possible — than a rousing sports biopic. As for The Rock, this is a whole new page of his career. Gleiberman says:
Johnson, shifting his whole aspect (he seems like a new actor), invests that silent, moody, hidden side of Mark with a quality of mystery. He gives an extraordinary performance, playing Mark Kerr as a gentle giant with demons that will not speak their name, yet the audience can feel them there; we want to see those demons healed. You might think the key word in the movie’s title is ‘smashing,’ but it’s actually ‘machine.’ Mark is a man who reins in his violence by having constructed his entire self — body and personality — as a controlled engine of demolition. The movie is about how this man-machine becomes a human being.
Jordan Mintzer of THR also notes how the fights don’t feel fake at all — which is amusing given Dwayne Johnson’s rise to fame via staged WWE bouts. The critic says The Smashing Machine is much less about athletic victory than human vulnerability, writing:
In Benny Safdie’s compellingly gritty and offbeat biopic, The Smashing Machine, Kerr wavers between hot and cold, passive and aggressive, chilled-out on the couch and pulverizing a door in his living room, showcasing a fragility that’s way bigger than his ballooning biceps. Played by Dwayne Johnson in the wrestler-turned-actor’s most absorbing turn yet, the mixed martial arts champ anchors a rise-and-fall fight flick that takes many cues from the genre but never delivers a Rocky-style knockout — nor does it even try to.
Cody Dericks of Next Best Picture rates the movie 7 out of 10, writing that there are “serious screenplay hiccups,” but Dwayne Johnson gives the performance of his career, making The Smashing Machine not only watchable but “entertaining and deeply moving.” Dericks continues:
Johnson portrays Kerr with an appropriate outward gentleness that only proves accurate as judged by the footage of the real-life Kerr that closes the film. This joviality makes the scenes where Kerr is under the hypnotic influence of painkillers even more shocking. Johnson doesn’t overdo it with stereotypical depictions of drug addiction; he’s simply clearly not himself, like a veil has been drawn over him. The life fades from his eyes, and his energy shifts in a disturbing way. Johnson’s performance is further assisted by the subtle yet believable prosthetic work by the Oscar-winning makeup legend Kazu Hiro.
Much has been made about the physical transformation Dwayne Johnson underwent for this role that included some intense makeup that basically left The Rock unrecognizable. However, it’s the performance — not the look — that has critics talking following the film’s festival premiere. All of these comments have me excited to check out The Smashing Machine when it hits theaters on Friday, October 3.