Benny Safdie’s newest film, The Smashing Machine, is a painfully slow sports biopic about pioneering UFC Hall of Fame fighter Mark Kerr.

Sports biopics are not a bad thing, but it’s very bad when I first start looking at my watch 25 minutes into a film and then continually looked at it for the rest of the 123-minute run time. It says something terrible about the pacing, and this is sad because I’m generally a fan of Safdie films. After Good Time and Uncut Gems, it’s saddening that Benny Safdie made a film that I cannot recommend. If you want to take a nap, that’s fine—but you shouldn’t need to pay the cost of a movie ticket. Put it this way: I nearly walked out of The Smashing Machine. The last time this happened was House of Gucci.

Now, I want to make it clear that I don’t watch UFC, WWE, etc., so the subject alone was probably never going to pique my interest, including from other filmmakers. I saw The Smashing Machine solely on the pedigree of the filmmaker and its stars, Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. It follows Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) while fighting in PRIDE and during the buildup of the UFC as he proves himself as the strongest fighter, showing his highs and lows and how he battled back. During the height of fame, Kerr would fight while being dependent on painkillers. Mind you, this was the late 1990s.

On the other side of the coin is Mark’s then-girlfriend, Dawn Staples-Kerr (Emily Blunt). We see how his career and drug habit impact their relationship. In theory, Dawn still going out to drink with her friends after Mark returns from rehab shouldn’t have any impact on the athlete, but it does. The two eventually married, but if the fighting in The Smashing Machine—albeit scripted—shows anything, it’s that maybe they weren’t the best people for each other. There are no shortages of fights featuring psych-outs, tactical shifts, and low blows. Hell, one of their fights was underscored by Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungleland,” and my main enjoyment from that entire sequence was listening to the song.

Johnson had started out as a backup college football player and later turned to the WWE, where he made a name for himself as The Rock. There was a time, though, when he didn’t know if he would make it, and that was the year he first met Mark Kerr. As one of the first Black champions in WWE history, it’s understandable why he would want to share Kerr’s story in The Smashing Machine. Safdie also realized that the actor was the only living performer who could pull off the transformation and duke it out on screen. And while all of this can be true, there is no denying that the film’s pace is rather sluggish.

Safdie turned to an earlier 2002 documentary of the same name about Kerr, not to mention interviews with other fighters who knew him. The research paved the way for writing the script for a film that includes Kerr’s rival-turned-coach, Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader). At the same time, Johnson wanted everything—the highs and lows—about Kerr’s life depicted on screen. After starring in a number of action-adventure films, nobody could blame Johnson for wanting to challenge himself. No matter how much he transforms himself in The Smashing Machine, his performance is not helped by the film’s sluggish pace.

The Smashing Machine has its moments—Johnson’s commitment and Blunt’s performance among them—but its sluggish pacing makes it exhausting to watch. Benny Safdie, usually so sharp with tension and momentum when working with his brother, stretches what could have been a compelling true story into a drawn-out slog. Instead of an emotional knockout, this sports biopic lands as a missed opportunity that never finds its rhythm.

DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER: Benny Safdie
CAST: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader, Bas Rutten, Oleksandr Usyk

A24 will release The Smashing Machine in theaters on October 3, 2025. Grade: 2/5

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