Silver Screen Thoughts - The Smashing Machine

I watched the movie The Smashing Machine the other day and I've got a lot of thoughts about it, so I figured I'd share them with you (YES, YOU!!!).

Warning that there will be spoilers - but since the movie is based on events that actually happened 20 years ago I don't know if they really classify as "spoilers".

For those who are unaware, The Smashing Machine follows Mark Kerr (played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson under an amazing amount of prosthetics) from 1997-2000 when he was a major competitor during the early days of MMA fighting. He built up his name in shows in Brazil, jumped to the US for the early days of UFC (in the movie I think they show him in UFC 5), then spends most of the rest of his career fighting in Pride in Japan, including their heavyweight championship tournament. Throughout the movie we see his battles with addiction and resolve to stay sober, as well as his intense relationship with his girlfriend.

When the movie first came out I heard that The Rock had done such a great job with his character that he should be considered for the Oscars, but that the movie itself wasn't good. The movie tanked at the box office, and from following Oscar prognosticators I learned that the slim returns also tanked The Rock's chances of being recognized for his role.

I came into the movie wondering how the actor playing the character the whole movie is based around could be Oscar-worthy, and yet the movie itself could stink.

So, after watching it, let's start with The Rock. And yes, this is an INCREDIBLE performance! The Rock is definitely not playing The Rock in this movie, which I kind of expected - he is doing some actual acting, and acting that is hard to do. He plays an outgoing, charming, and intellectual character throughout, but always with a hint of how dangerous a person he really is. The Rock also does a tremendous job of bringing his character to the precipice a few times, whether about drugs or his girlfriend, where he makes you think the character is going to go one way, and instead he goes the other way. The characterization and dialogue delivery were accomplishments enough - that's not even to mention that The Rock was playing a character decades younger than him, under heavy prosthetics, and that he had to also perform in all of the fight scenes. Really amazing performance all around!

And, with that...yes, the movie really does stink. In so many weird ways.

First, as good a job as The Rock does, he has no chemistry with Emily Blunt in this movie. I thought they worked well together in The Jungle Cruise, but obviously they're playing totally different kinds of characters here in a totally different kind of movie. That's also not to say that the lack of chemistry is all the fault of the actors - the movie makes weird choices for them. The first time we know there's trouble is when Mark Kerr refuses to recognize his girlfriend before a fight in Japan. Why does he refuse to recognize her? We don't know - the movie never tells us. Then they argue about that. Then they argue about drug use. Then they argue about feelings. Why are they arguing all the time? What set them off? The movie never says - they just do. Maybe there's some reality to it, but I don't think it helps the movie when you cringe seeing the two main characters in the same scene.

Speaking of weird choices in the movie...it's not really about anything. There's not much of a story to Mark Kerr, at least in terms of what we see in the movie. Yes, he goes from drug addict to sober, but that change happens midway through the movie and is then relegated into another point in his countless arguments with his girlfriend. His relationship with his girlfriend crescendos with him kicking her out followed by her suicide attempt - but then we find out in the closing moments that they later married and had a son - and then divorced - so you're not really seeing a complete picture of that either. It seems as though we're seeing his arc as a fighter, from being new and unbeatable to coping with a loss from being relieved to be out of the game - but then that damned closing crawl lets us know that he continued to fight for NINE MORE YEARS.

Speaking of the fighting, I am not an expert on MMA and don't regularly watch it. It's not that visually appealing to me - it usually either looks like people circling each other endlessly or rolling around on the floor together. But saying I'm a fan is not the same as saying I don't respect it - I know they are enduring fierce punishment and are doing astounding things physically in order to win. Which is why I find it weird that, in a sport that has knockout punchers and submission artists, the movie only shows one way to win a match over and over again - sit on top of someone's chest and repeatedly punch them in the face. It's one thing if that's what Mark Kerr was best at, but EVERY SINGLE MATCH in the movie ends the same way no matter who is fighting. Yes, it was the early days of MMA, but even then there were different kinds of fighters - Royce Gracie, for example, won the first UFC with nothing but submissions. It makes me wonder what the MMA community thought of this movie.

And those two paragraphs bring me to my final thought. As I said, there's not really a movie here. Apparently this whole movie was just a dramatization of a documentary on Mark Kerr that had come out recently. When they were working out the details of the movie, though, I can't believe they didn't realize that they actually had a great movie idea there the whole time. See, Mark's best friend and trainer was Wayne Coleman, and older fighter who suffered a losing streak before the events of the movie and then became Kerr's trainer. He guides Kerr to his first victories, but when Kerr is hospitalized and then goes to rehab, Kerr re-enters the arena and, despite fighting father time as the announcers say, surprisingly starts winning. He wins enough that he is one of the eight participants in the Pride championship tournament. And, while Kerr loses in the semi-final, Coleman actually WINS THE TOURNAMENT. How is that not the movie?!?! You could even keep the same ending, with Coleman sitting alone in a room with his championship belt wondering if it was all worth it. I can't believe nobody noticed that they had a classic sports movie here the whole time.

Anyway, I'd recommend this movie for those who want to see The Rock do some A-list acting, but don't expect much from the movie itself.