The Smashing Machine - Reviews

This is more complex, sad and authentic than your usual sports-movie fairy tale; like Raging Bull, it finds simple, poetic beauty in the ring  and like Rocky, it finds failure meaningful.

A moving portrait of masculinity in flux.

There are some incredible fight scenes in Benny Safdie's UFC biopic, The Smashing Machine. But all of them are between Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt.

...the film winds up feeling more honorary than anything else...

...a thoroughly entertaining sports biopic that packs one hell of a sentimental gutpunch. It’s smashing stuff.

One would not imagine needing a tissue at the final holding card of a Benny Safdie martial arts movie starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in a heavy layer of prosthetics and shaggy toupée.

Dwayne Johnson wrestles with greatness in muscular performance.

In the way in which Safdie makes the film a reflection of real life's mercurial morality, "The Smashing Machine" packs a subversive punch.

Proof that Dwayne Johnson is a real actor, and potentially a future Oscar winner.

Headlining action-movie idol and wrestler Dwayne Johnson drops “The Rock” from his identity in all senses to reveal a heartfelt core in Benny Safdie’s nimbly executed and oddly endearing “The Smashing Machine.”

No other casting was remotely possible – not unless Timothée Chalamet fancied bulking up.

It is very clearly an attempt by a filmmaker to make a sports movie that doesn’t lean into the expected clichés of sports movies.

...a crunchily satisfying fight movie that innovates subtly.

...does carve out its own legitimacy, both emotionally and visually.

...ett rått och känslomässigt laddat drama som skildrar en fighters kamp i och utanför ringen.