The Smashing Machine (2025) Review: A Swing And A Miss From One Of My Favorite Modern Directors

The Smashing Machine has me supremely disappointed. I expected so much from one of my favorite directors working right now. But instead, we got an average biopic.

The Smashing Machine (2025) fails to capitalize on what could’ve been an interesting story. This isn’t the Rock’s or Emily Blunt’s fault, as they both are trying very hard in this film. In fact, this is probably the Rock’s best performance to date by far. He does a great job of humanizing Mark Kerr and playing a somewhat interesting character.

The character is only somewhat interesting, though; it leaves us wanting more from the film. The film is just over two hours, which is relatively short for a biopic. And you can tell why because the film doesn’t seem to have much going on. I hate saying that, but it’s definitely true for me.

Benny Safdie, who directed The Smashing Machine (2025), also directed Uncut Gems and Good Time. Well, he directed them with his brother. I definitely thought the smashing machine would at least be up to par with those films. But the smashing machine doesn’t even come close to how good both those movies are. Not even in the same universe, unfortunately.

But those films are incredibly unique and among the best movies of the last 20 years. They are uniquely directed, written, and stylized. With The Smashing Machine (2025), you still have some decent cinematography and music, but beyond that, it’s nothing special.

How many biopics have you seen at this point in your life? The number seems to grow almost every month. I remember a couple of years ago, they even made a movie about how Pop-Tarts were made. So I don’t think there’s any shortage of historical events being turned into movies and biopics.

There seems to be a shortage of creativity in Hollywood. It’s hard for people to make original movies, which is a shame because the director’s prior work was extremely original, with uncut gems and good times. Two original and thought-provoking films. But this time, we get an average biopic. Maybe that was the studio, and perhaps some of it was cut scenes, as The Smashing Machine (2025) was relatively short for its nature. But I really wanted more.

Emily Blunt might get nominated for this because of her unique performance in The Smashing Machine (2025) and how different it is from some of her previous roles. The Rock probably won’t get nominated, but he’ll definitely try. This movie has come out around Oscar buzz season, which is around the end of the year. So expect more biopics and more Oscar-type movies to come out.

A lot of people are labeling it as award-season bait, which, sadly, is true, because I believe that all the people involved in this are above that. So what makes a good biopic? Well, for starters, we need a very, very interesting historical figure.

Not saying Mark Kerr isn’t super interesting, but I believe the way it’s shown in the smashing machine definitely shows it wasn’t worth making a movie about. The Smashing Machine (2025) might be interesting for UFC and MMA fans to see how far the sport has come, as this film depicts the early stages of those clubs.

But for the average movie fan, they’re going to just see an average biopic. This movie has a lot of generic things you see in biopics. So you have a famous person married to a woman who is not famous. The woman feels estranged because they aren’t sharing the limelight with their famous husband.

Then that leads to arguments, and this movie has plenty of them. Arguments can be done well, and it’s not a problem that they’re in this movie. But it becomes tedious at points because it’s just argument after argument, and I’ve seen so many movies like that, especially in the biopics.

I assume these arguments are just made to create Oscar buzz moments. It’s the kind of moment you can use in your clip to submit to the Oscars, and it’s just draining and frustrating. There are so many of these kinds of movies every year and TV shows, to be fair. But I’m tired of seeing how well they can argue being the determining factor of how good they are.

Like I said, both Emily Blunt and The Rock are good in The Smashing Machine (2025), especially Emily Blunt. But they don’t necessarily have the most incredible stuff to work with. It seems, at times, they’re about to have something pretty interesting revealed about their character.

But it’s all stuff we’ve seen before, and it’s nothing new. Sometimes that’s fine in a movie, but this time around it’s not, seeing as it’s a biopic and we wanted to see more interesting things. This might be important or entertaining to fans of Mark Kerr. But for someone like me, who doesn’t watch UFC or MMA, it doesn’t really hit home.

There are some good moments in The Smashing Machine (2025) when the characters are just breathing and having these intimate scenes. There are a few, and they are far between and not necessarily well done compared to other movies in the genre. I also wish they would focus more on the characters’ upbringing.

It doesn’t have to be anything crazy, but a couple of things here and there would’ve been nice. I understand that the film was more or less just about showing it for what it was, without giving too much backstory. At times, it’s frustrating because it’s hard to find a character to actually care about in the movie, which is why I see more and more movies nowadays.

This isn’t the worst movie ever, and it’s worth watching if you’re a fan of The Rock or Emily Blunt because they both do a good job. But if you’re expecting the next Uncut Gems or Good Time out of Josh Safdie, you’re not going to get it. I understand you can’t make the same movies over and over, but The Smashing Machine (2025) doesn’t even have much in common with the greatness of those other films. 

The only close thing is some of the cinematography, but that’s about it in my opinion. If you want to see The Rock act well in a movie —which a lot of people definitely do —it is worth watching for that alone. He definitely proves that he can act well, but I can’t help but think that this role was kind of close to what he went through in the WWE. 

The Smashing Machine (2025) tries to touch on some of the addictions of the characters, but it’s all surface-level. Nothing feels unique or interesting about that. When you think of addiction in a film, you kind of want to see a more drawn-out, interesting perspective. But this one is just about as generic as it gets, along with other angles of the film that seemed to fall short. 

So maybe the Rock will try to do more dramatic things, and perhaps we could see him do something where he doesn’t have to be massively muscular either. I know he was losing weight for an upcoming film, so that’ll be interesting to see at least.