When Uncut Gems director Benny Safdie begins the true story of mixed martial arts star Mark Kerr, the year is 1999. Kerr has just turned 30. So Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is 53 years old when he tries to pretend to be a young Kerr, even though the two men are almost the same age (in real life) and herein lies a consistent problem with this film for me as a lifelong fan of MMA. The Rock does everything in his power (and then some) to sell the fact that he’s not the muscle mountain from Fast 8 or the meathead from Jungle Cruise, Skyscraper, Jumanji or Hercules. He’s another beefcake here, with feelings. And he’s just turned 30. To be honest, it doesn’t work very well and despite early choruses of praise and tears in Cannes, I find it hard to swallow the fact that a 53-year-old film star is portraying a 30-year-old fighting phenomenon with joints like rubber.
In addition to this rather superficial complaint as a grumpy intro to my review of one of the most acclaimed films of the year, I also find it difficult, often impossible, to understand why Safdie chose 1999-2000 as a cross-section of Kerr’s life and why he chose Mark in the first place. His UFC period was, in my humble opinion, much more entertaining than the three Pride events portrayed here and, to be blunt, this film should have been about his best friend and mentor Mark Coleman, instead. Now, Coleman (“The Hammer”) had neither a problem with Oxycontin addiction nor a screaming, noisy bitch of a wife, which is what about 92% of this film revolves around, and thus becomes ridiculously boring in the process. The Smashing Machine should have been about Mark Coleman, though. I think all us MMA fans can agree on that.
20 years too old for the role, plain and simple.
Safdie is a skilful director and an extremely capable screenwriter though and just like in Good Time and Uncut Gems he is so raw and almost documentary-like in the way he structures scenes and gets up close and personal with the camera. The editing is quick without being too rushed, and it’s obvious that Benny has tried with hammer and tongs to squeeze the little ounces of “real” acting that exist out of his main character, and for possibly one scene (when he is hospitalised for an opiate overdose and once there is confronted by Coleman) it works reasonably well. The rest of the time, Dwayne’s acting is far too basic and his range too narrow to really express the pain that exists on paper, here. Kerr’s addiction sweeps Safdie by, the screaming matches with the weird girlfriend he peppers us with like automatic fire and it all becomes so slickly kitchen sink realistic without actually owning anything. The depth is completely missing, it becomes instead a rather superficial drama about a single emotional expression, anger, which makes Kerr appear as the whiner of all time rather than anything else.
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The many fight scenes when Kerr and Colemen have their much-hyped Pride fights are relatively well done, but there is a lack of pressure here too, a lack of substance and power. The Rock, especially, is stiff in his behaviour inside the Pride ring and it’s so noticeable that he never charges but holds back and really makes sure to never hit any opponent in the face with so much as a simple, light punch. Ryan Bader is better, of course, as an old UFC/Bellator veteran. His punches look like they hurt and he’s surprisingly better as Mark Coleman than I could have imagined. Emily Blunt does her best to draw the rage out of Dwayne and does so with a stereotypically thin and flat girlfriend who can’t utter a word without being deliberately provocative and attention-seeking.
It becomes so transparent, dull, simplistic and flat when you realise that Safdie only wanted to focus on loud kitchen arguments with his girlfriend and Kerr’s opiate addiction.
As I said, I don’t understand why Safdie chose Kerr when there are tonnes of more interesting stories to tell about Coleman, Shamrock or why not Couture. Unfortunately, I also don’t understand why he chose to focus on a single year of Pride rather than trying to stretch the arc a little wider and I find the focus on an extremely short period of opiate addiction to be ridiculously effect-seeking and flat. Minus the gorgeous production design, costume work and super gorgeous photography, there’s not much here that I intend to praise, unfortunately. The Rock can’t carry a heavy drama film like this on his well-pumped shoulders (however much the Cannes Film Festival wanted him to) and it doesn’t work with a 53-year-old bodybuilder trying to spoof a young MMA star. This did not work for me at all.
