Movie Review: The Smashing Machine (2025)

 

Review: 🎬 The Smashing Machine (2025)

A brutal portrait of a powerful man who can win a fight, but never quite understands what he is fighting for

 1.5 out of 5

The Smashing Machine is a movie about fighting, literal, professional, bone-jarring fighting, but it is more interested in the quieter, more corrosive fights that happen at home, behind closed doors, and inside the mind of a man who does not entirely understand himself. This is a true story about the early days of mixed martial arts, featuring Mark Kerr, a dominant hero of the era, whose reputation in the ring is matched only by the fragility he carries with him outside of it.

Kerr is presented as a series of contradictions. He looks like the sort of man who should be unbreakable, powerful, disciplined, respected within the emerging MMA world. Yet the film almost immediately frames him as vulnerable, almost gentle, with the expression of someone who wants badly to be liked. He carries with him a responsibility of who he should be at home, in the ring and to his fans all while portraying a kind soul. Beneath that kindness, however, there is a simmering rage, a barely contained intensity that seems always on the verge of turning inward or outward, depending on the day. The film's most truthful moments are not the fights, but the scenes where Kerr appears unsure whether the violence he unleashes is a tool, a compulsion or simply who he is. These moments are accented with him in the hospital as a form of both healing and intervention on his destructive path.

Addiction hangs over the story like a low cloud. It is not presented melodramatically, nor with much structure, but rather as an ever present fog surrounding Kerr's existence. His dependence is less a plot engine than a gritty constant interference pattern distorting his relationships and sense of purpose. In this way, The Smashing Machine is less about the rise of a champion than about the erosion of a man's inner clarity.

That erosion is nowhere more evident than in Kerr's relationship with his girlfriend, Dawn Staples. One of the film's more intriguing and frustrating choices is that it never allows us to settle comfortably into the dynamic between Mark and Dawn. We are never entirely sure whether Mark is the antagonist or whether Dawn is, there are hints from Mark's circle of support that Dawn is the unhealthy anchor in the story, but there is never clarity that Mark's behavior is informed by her role either. Their conflict plays out less as villainy than as a slow tightening of incompatible expectations. Kerr sees himself primarily as a provider, a role he clings to as proof of worth and masculinity. Dawn, meanwhile, seems to want more, more stability, more emotional availability, and perhaps more success as well. The film resists providing this clarity and only portrays the unhealthy interdependence of their exchanges.

What emerges instead is a cautionary tale about an unhealthy relationship built on misaligned self-images. Kerr's understanding of himself lags painfully behind what Dawn appears to expect of him, and that gap becomes a source of resentment on both sides. The film wisely avoids easy diagnosis, but it also avoids coherence. Scenes of confrontation arrive without sufficient buildup and then vanish without emotional resolution, leaving the audience to fill in gaps that feel accidental rather than intentional.

The acting is uniformly strong, with strong performances from Dwayne Johnson as Kerr with the physical authenticity that grounds the character, and Emily Blunt as Staples who arguably is effective at portraying a character who is younger than she is with enough complexity to not portray her as a simple caricature. Yet, the performances alone cannot compensate for a narrative that feels disjointed. The film seems uncertain whether it wants to be a character study, a sports drama, or an intimate relationship portrait, and so it becomes a little bit of each...and not quite enough of any.

For audiences steeped in MMA history, the film will likely resonate. There is a genuine power in seeing the early days of the sport depicted without glamour, and Kerr's inner turmoil may feel familiar to those who understand the brutal demands placed on fighters. For everyone else, The Smashing Machine may feel like a story that would have been better told as a documentary. The rawness, the moral ambiguity, and the unresolved questions cry out for both context and reflection rather than dramatization.

As a feature film, it does not quite justify its existence. As a portrait of Mark Kerr, it is compelling but incomplete. Like its subject, The Smashing Machine is strong, sincere, and damaged, and never fully sure what it wants to be.