Dwayne Johnson in The Smashing Machine
THE SMASHING MACHINE
An account of three years in the life of mixed martial arts champion Mark Kerr, writer/director Benny Safdie's The Smashing Machine boasts an absolutely outstanding performance from someone you may not have anticipated giving one. He's unquestionably a staggering physical specimen. Yet part of what makes the guy so wonderful in this sports-themed character study lies in the dichotomy between his brick-shithouse physique and his soulful, even tender demeanor. He's genial and touching and fiercely present throughout Safdie's film, and when his character deservedly wins a big match near the finale, good luck suppressing the lump in your throat. The actor's name? Ryan Bader.
What's that? You thought I was talking about Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson? Oh yeah, he's awfully good, too. His portrayal of Kerr easily ranks as Johnson's finest screen work to date, and he's as unrecognizable as 260 all-muscle pounds of A-list movie star ever gets. But 2025 marks Johnson's 25th year in films. The Smashing Machine is Bader's first movie, and so far as I can tell – depending on how much performance you imagine goes into the MMA and the Ultimate Fighting Championship – his role as Kerr's best friend and fellow competitor Mark Coleman is Bader's first legit acting gig. The man is phenomenal. When Safdie and his brother Josh worked on titles including Good Time and Uncut Gems, they routinely cast acting novices in significant roles. Former UFC champ Bader, though, is a particularly major find, so charismatic yet so naturalistic that it feels like the 42-year-old has been acting for decades, and has now reached that stage in his career where he can be confidently commanding without a hint of sweat. Don't get me wrong: Bader and Johnson do sweat here – a lot. In neither individual, however, do you sense any performative strain, and the ease and comfort they exude opposite one another is a thrill to behold. In recent years, it was starting to look as though Johnson was no longer capable of genuine screen rapport with anyone. Turns out he very much is. Maybe he just needed a true kindred spirit to share some with.
Covering Kerr's career and personal life from his 1997 standing as an MMA great to his bouts in and outside the 2000 Pride Fighting Championships in Japan, Safdie's movie is adapted from John Hyams' 2002 documentary The Smashing Machine: The Life & Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr. In a number of ways, this version is almost redundant, because it, too, feels like a documentary, primarily in how it eschews the clichés that can make other inspirational sports dramas – cough, The Senior!, cough – insufferable. As Kerr contends with the pressures of an uninterrupted winning streak, ceaseless physical pain, and opioid addiction, plus the needs of his longtime live-in girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt), you may think you know precisely how this true-life tale will unfurl. Safdie's script and directorial rhythms, though, don't necessarily match the rise-to-fame/fall-from-grace/ultimate-triumph blueprint we're accustomed to. (The film might actually play better for viewers like me – those who barely know thing one about the MMA and UFC and Pride Fighting – than it will for in-the-tank fans.) Kerr experiences victories and defeats, to be sure, both in and out of the ring. But Safdie is clearly more interested in who Kerr is than what he does, and while this approach might drive some sports-flick devotees crazy, it's really quite riveting to hunt for personality clues in the eyes and bearing of Dwayne Johnson, considering how tough it is to even see Dwayne Johnson in there.
I have no idea what kinds of facial prosthetics and applications were used to make Johnson's familiar features so thoroughly disappear. (Are his eyes somehow half as wide as usual?) The effect, though, pays huge dividends, because this isn't simply The Rock going subtle; this is The Rock effectively gone. Even Kerr's championship braggadocio in the ring is underplayed – one scene finds him nearly paralyzed with concern over the well-being of a competitor whose face he pummeled – and in all of his encounters with the public, the man is deferential, courtly, even shy. He's as sensitive-seeming to interviewers as he is to an elderly lady and her grandson in a waiting room, and when Kerr is impatient in a heavily populated setting, as when a doctor refuses him opioids and instead recommends Advil, you see frustration in the man's eyes but no real rage, his voice delicately conveying that this is just another of life's little injustices he has to swallow.
Kerr's eyes and voice do not register similar calm in his confrontational scenes with Dawn, and Safdie's writing and Blunt's frequently shrill performance make you understand why, for better or worse. I'd argue worse. In the sports-drama canon, in inspirational dramas of any kind, “long-suffering girlfriend” is a cliché every bit as draining as “hero lets his ego get the best of him” and “hero's best pal suffers a debilitating/fatal injury that teaches his buddy a life lesson.” (Cleverly, Safdie upends that latter conceit in a match that appears earmarked for Mark Coleman's death, only for the man to wind up winning his fight.) But The Smashing Machine really does a number on Dawn, who is so routinely made to look selfish, hypochondriacal, and damagingly unwell that the movie almost seems designed to make audiences hate her, or at least wish that she's go away, preferably forever.
Dawn and Kerr do share a number of lovely moments in the first half, and Johnson seems more comfortable with his former Jungle Cruise co-star than he has in any of his other (noticeably few) romantic screen pairings. I don't necessarily buy him and Blunt as a couple, but I do believe they're friends, and the actors seem to have fun together. Still, an early scene of Kerr kindly yet passive-aggressively chiding Dawn for screwing up his breakfast protein shake doesn't fill in the blanks for why the woman always seems intrusive and hostile at the worst possible times. Why, in the manner of so many long-suffering girlfriends over sports-cinema history, she feels the need to gripe about their relationship failings minutes before he enters the ring. Or why she complains about life being All About Him when their dialogue exchanges have been more expressly All About Her. Or why she's amazed to find Kerr, in the process of recovering from his addiction, upset that she would come home drunk in the middle of the afternoon. When, at the end of her latest tirade, Dawn shatters the porcelain bowl that we previously watched Kerr purchase with great feeling for his gal, she subsequently storms out the door, and I probably wasn't alone in feeling great relief that this harpy was out of the film. But like a bad penny, she kept showing up again and again, and the only true tension in these insulting bits comes from waiting to see if Kerr will snap and unleash his anger with Dawn physically.
That's the wrong kind of tension for The Smashing Machine to pursue. Safdie's purely functional, stereotypical imagining of Dawn puts audiences in the uncomfortable position of actively wanting to see the woman taken down, and no matter how closely events from the film mirror events from real life, her treatment here still feels like we're being sold a bill of goods. Nagging Dawn prods and gentle giant Kerr endures (if occasionally also punching a door in half and ripping apart a room), and perhaps it's meant to be ironic that he doesn't feel for any of his competitors the disdain he has – and, it should be noted, his trainers have – for Dawn. Compared to Dawn's actual purpose in the film, “long-suffering girlfriend” would be an upgrade. She's almost unquestionably the movie's villain, especially given that none of Kerr's challengers remotely qualify, and what we consequently get is something I previously thought impossible: a deeply unappealing Emily Blunt performance.
If I've spent more wordage than intended on the movie's callow treatment of Dawn, it's partly because her scenes are the worst things about the film, as well as the only scenes that leave Johnson looking unsure, as if he didn't know, and wasn't told, what emotional registers were required from Kerr during all this domestic drama. The actor is on completely solid footing, however, in the pro-fight sequences that naturally play into his illustrious past (and occasional present). While Safdie may not demonstrate Scorsese-like imagination in terms of staging the bouts, cinematographer Maceo Bishop's camera continually seems to be right where it needs to be, and Safdie, serving as his film's own editor, keeps the action moving crisply and coherently. He and Bishop also do a first-rate job of intermingling 16 mm, 65 mm, and even VHS footage to underline both specific time periods and Kerr's public-versus-private personae. As sports dramas go, there's maybe less “happening” in The Smashing Machine than in most. What does happen in Kerr's professional life, however, feels truthful, and Johnson's dialed-in intensity keeps you invested in Kerr's fate.
How, though, amid all the Dawn melodrama, did Safdie miss that the truer, more engaging love story was the one taking place between its pair of Marks? In my head, there's an alternate-reality version of this film out there: one that finds Bader's Coleman, briefly shown to be a loving, playful dad, making the difficult choice to leave his family (for a time) to ensure his buddy's well-being; one that explores Coleman's precise thoughts about potentially facing Kerr in a climactic bout at Pride; one in which we see the toll that years of professional and personal second-class status takes on the man. In the most heart-wrenching scene of Safdie's entire movie, with Kerr confined to a hospital bed, the patient's continued attempts to convince Coleman that he's fine lead to the champ dissolving in tears, embarrassed and grateful for the one person who might know exactly what he's going through. What Johnson and Bader do in this scene, as they do elsewhere together, is remarkable. They make The Smashing Machine better by making it the movie it should've been from the start.
ANEMONE
When you include the legendary examples of Laurence Olivier and Marlon Brando, Daniel Day-Lewis is probably either the greatest living male movie actor or the greatest one who ever lived. And for the first half-hour of Anemone, in which Day-Lewis plays its lead, it's easy, and kind of inevitable, to find yourself basking in the performance beauty of one of the all-time best. At age 60, he announced his retirement from acting eight years ago, in advance of Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread. A lot of us didn't believe that news, as Day-Lewis also enjoyed years-long hiatuses from acting prior to 2017 – why make retirement official when he could simply enjoy lengthy breaks being a cobbler or fashion designer or whatever? But the record-setting three-time Best Actor Oscar winner is unquestionably back in his 27-year-old son Ronan's modern-day familial drama, a work whose screenplay is credited to both Day-Lewises. With Ronan being an acclaimed painter, the movie is visually stunning. With Daniel being an acting genius who knows his way around juicy material, there are gorgeously rendered monologues for days. Somehow, depressingly, I could barely wait for this thing to end.
Credit where it's due: Ronan unquestionably understands where our initial interest in his film lies. Anemone is principally focused on the reunion between middle-aged Brit Jem Stoker (Sean Bean) and his older brother Ray (the Day-Lewis père), the latter of whom has spent nearly two decades living a hermetic existence in the woods of northern England. Jem is now involved with Ray's former wife Nessa (Samantha Morton), and in the wake of Ray's disappearance before she gave birth, Ray's and Nessa's teen son Brian (Samuel Bottomley) has lately been exhibiting violent tendencies associated with the birth-father soldier he never met. Given coordinates by persons unknown, Jem heads to Ray's woodland cabin to convince his brother to return to London and, I guess, talk some sense into the boy. (The script is maddeningly unspecific about what Jem and Nessa hope to accomplish with this plan.) After some early hostility following his entrance into Ray's cabin, Ray and Jem drink together, swim, go on hikes, and ultimately bond. What happens before the bonding, though, is what's truly magnificent.
I honestly can't recall the last time a leading character's face was so fully, shrewdly denied us before making its first appearance. When we first see Ray, even before we meet Jem, it's from behind, as the man chops logs with a day-to-day normalcy that hints at his power and aggression. Afterward, for what feels like an unconscionably long time, we only see Ray in flashes: barely reflected in dirty glass surfaces; all but hidden between the laundry flapping on an outside line. Ronan clearly knows that we are dying to see his dad again in all his cinematic glory, and is perversely delaying the reveal for as long as possible. And when Daniel finally turns to the camera, more than 20 minutes into his screen time without having said a word, the effect is almost preposterously exciting. Look! It's him! I'd argue that the thrill of seeing Daniel Day-Lewis on-screen again, and hearing his incandescently, emotionally overwhelming readings, lasts for a full fourth of Anemone's two-hour run time, including Ray's recitation of wildly upsetting revenge on an abusive priest – a tale that might be, but likely isn't, wholly fabricated. I was in Heaven during the movie's opening quarter. Then, given the increasing portentousness and dullness and repetition of what came next, everything slowly started going to Hell.
To be clear, Daniel is thunderously good throughout. When has he not been? (Well, okay: Nine. Also 1988's misbegotten comedy Stars & Bars, which almost nobody saw. But that's it.) And I'm ecstatic that he's around again, even if merely to headline mediocre movies. Yet while it would be understandable if it was only Ronan who gave his dad a trio of one-take, Oscar-clip monologues in which Daniel ranted and sobbed and laughed and demonstrated his fearsome range, the fact that, as co-screenwriter, Daniel gave himself these opportunities somewhat dulls your fervor. What, in his myriad cinematic achievements, previously seemed showy for purpose feels like showing off here, and his acting grandeur has the unfortunate side effect of making the Day-Lewises' plotting appear all the more dispensable, and frankly silly. I mean, seriously? This whole narrative involving a 20-year hermit's return to civilization is designed so the guy can tell his birth child he's not the asshole the kid thought he was? Like that alone is gonna change Brian's downward trajectory? Anemone hasn't been fashioned to be about anything beyond Oscar clips, as well as meaningless moments of Ronan's visual invention. (Every admittedly arresting dream sequence/hallucination is a thematic bust.) I'm beyond thrilled that Daniel Day-Lewis is back, and love that he came back in support of his son. The guy has “Father of the Year” locked and loaded. I'm afraid that's also where Anemone's awards run is gonna end.
GOOD BOY
Daniel Day-Lewis may not star in the new horror film Good Boy, but I'd argue that his canine equivalent does. The premise for director/co-writer Ben Leonberg's brisk, scary, subtly overpowering indie is so ingenious yet so simple that I'm frankly amazed no one ever attempted this perspective before: It's a haunted-house movie told entirely from the perspective of the dog. Fright flicks involving malevolent spirits have long teased us with images of alert pups barking at invisible nothings, suggesting the presence of paranormal entities only the family pet is cognizant of. Through the fixed, hyper-sensitive gaze of its leading retriever Indy (playing “himself”), Good Boy finally lets us see what these trustworthy dogs have seen, and what Indy sees ain't pretty.
Suffering from what appears to be a chronic lung ailment, Indy's owner Todd (Shane Jensen, whose face is rarely visible) relocates from the big city to a disheveled country house formerly owned by his grandfather, who, like generations of prior family members, died there under questionable circumstances. This fixer-upper is a mess, but the cobwebby décor is less off-putting than the sights and sounds Indy is privy to that Todd obviously isn't: shadowy figures lurking within the home's two main floors; howls coming from the basement; visions of other people – and another dog! – inhabiting the premises. Maybe the dimly lit atmosphere would've been cheerier if Todd didn't fall asleep to grainy VHS copies of Carnival of Souls and Mutant every night. Regardless, our four-legged protagonist senses that something evil is holding Todd in its grasp, and given his person's blackout spells and his own inability to dial 9-1-1, Indy has to do something about it.
Let's quickly shoo the elephant from the room for those of you who wouldn't attend otherwise: The dog does not die. (Sorry – spoiler alert!) Leonberg may not have directed a feature before, but I guarantee he'd never be allowed to direct another one if he had us spend his film's 73 minutes (!) gazing into his real-life puppy's beautifully expressive mug only to off him at the end. That said, and even granting our assumption that Indy will make it out okay, Leonberg and co-screenwriter Alex Cannon do keep us in a state of constant dread about the canine's welfare. There are plenty of frightening scenes here involving creatures sneaking up on or baldly confronting Indy – some of them answering the question “What are dog nightmares like?” – and I aurally yelped when, in an homage to Mutant, a hand suddenly appeared to drag Indy under the bed. But Leonberg's superlative direction of his pooch extends to the melancholic empathy he evinces. At one point, Todd leaves the house in the morning, and we suffer along with Indy as he immediately moans and runs to a living-room window to await his person's return. A smash cut to nighttime, and Indy is still there in the exact same position, looking out the window, waiting.
If you see the movie in its current cineplex run, please stay past the end credits for a roughly five-minute featurette in which Leonberg demonstrates some of the techniques and tricks used – during a 400-day shoot over a period of three years – to elicit his dog's flabbergasting debut performance. Stanley Kubrick spent 400 days shooting Eyes Wide Shut (with a Guinness World Record to prove it), and you can't tell me that what Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman did there is any kind of improvement on what Indy does here. As with many haunted-house flicks, the particulars don't always hold together and some of the imagery is unnecessarily baffling, and every so often, Indy's actions aren't consistent with what a real dog could do. (Not that I didn't cheer when he launched himself through a window, Bruce Willis-style, to protect his friend.) Yet even when Good Boy doesn't make logical sense, it makes complete emotional sense, its metaphoric horrors presented with such deep feeling for the love shared between pets and people that I found myself, quite unexpectedly, reduced to a blubbering wreck on the drive home. Toward the end of this fantastically enjoyable, inventive, moving outing, Todd stares into Indy's doleful face and says, quietly, “You're a good dog.” The best, actually.
