Film Review: THE SMASHING MACHINE: A Career Best Performance by The Rock in a Movie That Loses Focus [TIFF 2025]

The Smashing Machine Review

The Smashing Machine (2025) Film Review from the 50th Annual Toronto International Film Festival, a movie directed and written by Benny Safdie, and starring Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Lyndsey Gavin, Oleksandr Usyk, Ryan Bader, Satoshi Ishii, Bas Rutten, and Stephen Quadros.

The Smashing Machine houses the greatest acting performance by Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to date. As Mark ‘The Smashing Machine’ Kerr, Johnson displays a surprising and effective emotional range in-between bouts of great violence, making these lighter but necessary story beats impactful and memorable. Johnson brings Mark Kerr to life, showing two sides of the mixed martial artist: the cocky fighter on one hand and the human being beneath the massive exterior and wrestling prowess on the other.

Two staggering events during The Smashing Machine cause Mark Kerr’s emotions to burst to the surface: one is the result of a disturbingly prolonged bludgeoning during a match, and the second is the aftermath of an event that is kept completely off-screen but is retold later in a hospital room, a smart narrative choice—it avoids going over the same event twice in the film. The second event is more about Kerr’s reaction to it and what he does afterward than the event itself. It’s a turning point, a life-altering hot-spot, like Randy “The Ram” Robinson’s hospital emergency in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, though Kerr’s successes in life lead him down a different recovery road than Randy’s malfeasance led him.

The noteworthy acting in The Smashing Machine is not limited to Dwayne Johnson. Emily Blunt’s portrayal of Dawn Staples could easily have been a single-note performance, but the moment she begins crying while taking a photo of her boyfriend and the man that just hurt him, the viewer realizes that the characters in this film have multiple layers, competing emotions, and motivations.

It is Kerr and Staples’ relationship in The Smashing Machine that the film relies on when the narrative is outside the MMA ring. The film, however, cleverly shows how their relationship affects the MMA ring and vice versa. Dawn is at first the dutiful, always-in-your-corner girlfriend (think Maureen Hope in Antoine Fuqua’s Southpaw), but after Kerr is in recovery, Staples is unbending in her devotion to maintaining her drinking/hungover lifestyle. It’s contradictory and realistic—people are this selfish and myopic in real life, and Staples’ rationale is reasonable, i.e., she can self-moderate. While wanting to be supportive, she intones that she doesn’t “have a problem” like Kerr has and can and should be able to occasionally drink. This dynamic and growing rift is the backbone of the third act of The Smashing Machine.

The initial home-life moments following Mark Kerr getting out of rehab are the funniest scenes in The Smashing Machine, e.g., someone of Kerr’s physicality calling his sponsor while arguing with his waif girlfriend: “Do you hear her? Do you see what I’m dealing with?” Pure hilarity in the moment, in the disparity between Kerr and Staples’ sizes, and in their power dynamics. Unlike the previous incarnation, this new version of Kerr has learned emotional restraint, while Dawn Staples, and Kerr’s relationship with her, spin out of control.

Kerr’s personal growth, struggling to maintain his sobriety, with the subtleties of Johnson’s performance coming through, sparks the viewers’ affinity for Kerr and his now clear decision-making. It’s difficult to root for someone whom you don’t know that beats up people. That is the scenario at the beginning of The Smashing Machine. It is very different when you meet someone trying to live their best life with the hand they’ve been dealt. This is the satisfying section of The Smashing Machine that the viewer eventually gets and the version of Kerr that the viewer eventually sees. The viewer witnesses where Kerr comes from and where he is potentially going if he can avoid detrimental influences and events. In due course throughout the film, those influences become personified in Dawn Staples, and those events come to revolve around her.

The branching-off into the secondary storyline of Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader) in the third act of The Smashing Machine eventually hurts the film, taking far more than it gives to the structure of the movie and the cohesion of the plot. The third act should be sharp and tightly button up Mark Kerr’s storyline. It doesn’t. Coleman is a good character, but it’s not his story. It’s Mark ‘The Smashing Machine’ Kerr’s story. If the finale is to be split between these two characters, it should be established at the outset of the film that the movie is about these characters, and not solely Kerr. The eventual segmentation would still slow the film’s finale, but its existence would at least be justified.

Scrupulous editing would benefit The Smashing Machine’s third act and its ending. The tacked-on real-world footage does not bring the film home; rather, it pushes the film further from the mark.

Rating: 8/10

Leave your thoughts on this The Smashing Machine review and the film below in the comments section. Readers seeking to support this type of content can visit our Patreon Page and become one of FilmBook’s patrons.

Readers seeking more Toronto International Film Festival news can visit our Toronto International Film Festival Page, our Film Festival Page, and our Film Festival Facebook Page.

Readers seeking more film reviews can visit our Movie Review Page, our Movie Review Twitter Page, and our Movie Review Facebook Page.

Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Mobile App, Google News, Feedly, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, Telegram, Mastodon, Flipboard, Bluesky, and Threads.