“Smashing Machine”: beyond the physical transformation, Dwayne Johnson rocks the role of MMA champion Mark Kerr

4:3 images become blurry in places. The fighters, modern gladiators in tight boxers, prepare to enter the ring. With bulging, sweat-oiled muscles and the build of a colossus, Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) arrives at the octagon. The shots and zooms follow one another, as if taken from a program recorded on a VHS tape. Bodies are damaged and bleed under the public outcry. Until the victory of the “Smashing Machine”, the killing machine.

This introductory scene sums up Benny Safdie’s ambition in Crushing machine. Faced with this clinical, if not disturbing, violence, the filmmaker contrasts the delicate words of a man passionate about his art, mixed martial arts (MMA), an authentic response from Mark Kerr, echoed here by the soft voice of Dwayne Johnson.

Separated from his brother Josh (Uncut gems, good timing), The director sets out here to observe the champion and pioneer of his discipline, from glory to setbacks between 1997 and 2000. A discipline misunderstood or even condemned for its cruelty in the United States, the combat sport only found an audience in the Japanese regions where the titan is celebrated as a hero.

Biographical film about a relative unknown, you could say. The idea comes from The Rock himself who, before the documentary of the same name The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Wrestler Mark Kerr (2002), would have identified with the warrior, and would have asked the New York filmmaker to place his grainy ’90s cameras in the four corners of the ring. Hoping to (finally) play a dramatic role and find the cracks buried behind his mountain of muscles.

A gentle giant named Johnson

Everything falls apart when the man, an invincible demigod in the ring, suffers his first failure with opioids, painkillers that have become remedies for melancholy. Our heart sinks when the glorious fighter lies, destroyed and amorphous, on a sofa or collapses in the arms of his trainer Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader, a true MMA champion in his first role), whose bromance fuels the intrigue. We join (necessarily) this anti-Rocky who timidly tries to recover in rehab or in a gym, when his partner Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt) doesn’t cause him too many problems.

the star of jumanji It is disturbing in this film where poetry infiltrates everywhere. Beyond the simple physical metamorphosis (fourteen kilos of extra muscle and three or four hours of makeup and fourteen different prostheses every day), Dwayne Johnson completely disappears under the appearance of Mark Kerr, in his victories, as in his addictions. The actor also moves people in those little things that make the character exist. Like this dreamlike scene on an airplane: the gentle giant, squeezed into his small seat, looks out the window.

A performance – clearly worthy of an Oscar – that makes us forget the weak points of a linear and expected scenario. The dysfunctional relationship between Mark Kerr and Dawn Staples proves inconsistent and even parasitic, despite Emily Blunt’s best efforts to save a messy character whose only line is being a narcissistic, overwrought fiancée.

The production, on the other hand, stands out for its contemplation. Without falling into a gigatestosterone spectacle, Benny Safdie presents a distanced vision, limiting the fights to pure banality, and also captures, in this everyday life, the sweetness and melancholy of a man, sublimated by the jazz compositions of the Belgian harpist Nala Sinephro. A work awarded the Silver Lion for best achievement at the Venice Film Festival.