The Rock, rebooted

The film by Benny Safdie—one half of the Safdie Brothers of Uncut Gems fame—seems like an obvious fit at a distance. Kerr was involved in the early days of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) octagon around the same time that Johnson’s wrestling persona The Rock helped lead the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE, then the World Wrestling Federation) to unprecedented heights in the 1990s. The two companies are now under the same umbrella, TKO, and Johnson is on its board. Kerr is big. Johnson is big. Outside of a few roles, the actor has usually played a muscle-bound caricature out of necessity, so a real subject who fits his stature would undoubtedly seem welcome. However, for anyone remotely familiar with Kerr—or with John Hyams’ lo-fi documentary The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr (2002), from which the movie heavily borrows—the fighter’s cautious poise is a significant departure for Johnson, whose charisma as The Rock has been a wrestling mainstay for decades, and has even informed his brand as a movie star.

Right from the get-go, Safdie’s film (like Hyams’ documentary) captures the gentler side of Kerr in absurd fashion, as the bruised brawler calmly explains his bloody profession to an unassuming old woman at a doctor’s office. Kerr, like Johnson, has a welcoming calm, but where the blazing screen star projects a carefully sculpted image, Kerr has a naïveté. Where Johnson’s dialogue has, for many years, sounded akin to his wrestling promos—as though each pronouncement existed to sell tickets to his next venture—both the real Kerr and Johnson’s conception of him have a flatter cadence that only seems to rise in tone near the end of his statements, as though he were innocently asking a question. He sounds like a lost puppy. It’s hard not to fall in love with him even in his worst moments.

The movie traces Kerr’s struggles with opioid addiction and mirrors them with his codependent relationship with his girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt), opposite whom Johnson also played the friendly, clean-cut steamboat skipper Frank Wolff in Jungle Cruise. Their dynamic here is a far cry from the Disney ride-based film, a departure that, one assumes, may have factored into their sharing the screen together in this markedly different mode, if only to signal to critics and audiences that things are different this time. Regardless of how much marketing research went into casting them together, the gambit pays off. Blunt goes beyond the typical doting/supporting Hollywood partner and presents a real danger to Kerr’s ego. The toxic couple wounds one another emotionally, affording Johnson the chance to tap into instincts he’s never really needed to (or perhaps wanted to) as an action hero, or as the WWE’s “People’s Champion.” In these two forms of entertainment, the goal isn’t just winning, but standing tall with your chest puffed out; Johnson has even had a “no losing” clause in some of his film contracts.

The Smashing Machine is a different story. Not only does it center the theme of learning to lose gracefully—Kerr’s first defeat sends him on a destructive downward spiral, teeing up the rest of the narrative—but the body language with which Johnson moves through the movie is practically alien compared to his previous endeavors. Those familiar with his work might be tempted to wait for his signature “Rock-isms” to shine through, but apart from one tongue-in-cheek instance of pointing out the goosebumps on his arm, his familiar ticks and gestures remain absent.

Rather than being the most important man in the room, Johnson’s version of Kerr is more boyish, glancing around for approval and looking helpless when the odds are against him. MMA is, of course, a sport fought without shoes, but during his practice in private gyms, when Johnson sits on the floor mats or in locker rooms, he’s spread eagle and barefooted, and can’t help but resemble an overgrown toddler. For once, his body-builder stature does the opposite of making him look imposing.

There’s a fragility to his performance that viewers have seldom seen. Wrestling audiences have only glimpsed it when things haven’t gone his way, first in 1996, when the crowd rejected his smiling, goody-two-shoes novice with chants of “Die, Rocky, die,” and then in 2012, when his opponent John Cena went off script and verbally targeted his insecurities (specifically, writing his lines on his wrist). However, in the grand scheme of things, Johnson’s recent box office failures have left him exposed. So, as much as The Smashing Machine might be a tonal departure for his performance, it’s exactly the kind of brilliant calculation that’s usually helped him bounce back. Johnson’s aforementioned rejection in the ‘90s led to the formation of his brash, trash-talking “Hollywood” persona—ironically, a villain the crowd fell in love with—and his recent attempt to insert himself into the main event of WrestleMania 40, in lieu of fan favorite Cody Rhodes, led to another rejection, and yet another pivot, this time as a “heel” or wrestling villain. His intrusion was roundly booed, pushing him to tread new ground as a brand-new, power hungry “Final Boss” character, whose ownership of wrestling’s sprawling Samoan lineage was a driving force, and whose partial ownership of WWE was made no secret. It’s some of the best and most frightening work of his career.

For non-wrestling fans, Johnson was last seen on the backfoot after his falling out with Fast & Furious co-star Vin Diesel, which led to his own middling spinoff film, and after the DC superhero flop Black Adam, a kitchen-sink approach to the genre where he tried to be edgy, lovable, suave and self-aware, all at once. His attempt to, in his words, change “the hierarchy of power” in Warner Bros.’ superhero universe was roundly mocked, and was even followed by a reboot sans his involvement. So, with the studio blockbuster space no longer his forté, his pivot to a more serious arthouse style was all but inevitable as his next business venture. However, the more grounded drama of The Smashing Machine (and presumably that of his next Safdie collaboration, Lizard Music, and his upcoming mob film with Martin Scorsese) require the kind of sincerity he hasn’t really been known for, which makes his role as Kerr such a delightful triumph. It is, to put it bluntly, refreshing to see him truly give a sh*t after coasting on the broadest possible charm for so many years.

As Kerr, Johnson dials admirably into the insecurities of muscle men accustomed to standing atop the mountain of success. He finds, within its story, a never-before-seen vulnerability, rendered in such heart-wrenching and realistic hues that it’s practically impossible to see him as we once did: as a mascot for his own success. The movie, and the change it represents, may also be his next big career pivot, but it’s one that renders his calculations invisible (or at least, less visible) to most audiences, and rests entirely on his unprecedented commitment to emotional reality. Even if The Smashing Machine is merely his latest focus-tested venture, that’s okay: It’s one that has taken him to places he’s never been before, and places most audiences will be eager to follow.