The Smashing Machine doesn’t transform Dwayne Johnson

Dwayne Johnson is a big-hearted, approachable Hollywood star who could snap you like a twig without so much as working up a sweat. He almost certainly wouldn’t do it because the man is a mensch, both on-camera and off, but there is always the chance that he might, if he properly lost his rag and momentarily saw red. He knows it and we know it and this tense shared understanding may be part of his appeal.

In Johnson’s new film, The Smashing Machine, the 53-year-old actor portrays MMA fighter Mark Kerr, “255 pounds of pure muscle”, who is working to wean himself off an addiction to opioids. At home, newly sober, Kerr notes that his girlfriend Dawn (played by Emily Blunt) has for some reason put semi-skimmed milk in his smoothie. It’s no big deal, he assures her, he simply assumed she would know he prefers whole milk, just as he assumed she would remember to prune his favourite cactus and to fish those disgusting leaves out of the pool.

The Smashing Machine, for the record, contains a number of noisy MMA contests. None, though, are quite as charged and gruelling as the scenes inside Kerr’s house. The more Kerr shrugs and smiles, the more the tension levels ramp up, gently hinting at what might happen next.

The Smashing Machine isn’t perfect, but it’s an excellent acting showcase, fitting a bold new frame around its A-list star and allowing him plenty of room to find his range. Johnson’s portrayal of Kerr has already been tipped as an Oscar contender (disclaimer: at this stage of the race, every half-decent performance gets tipped as an Oscar contender). It also provides a welcome counterweight to such feel-good entertainments as Jungle Cruise (2021) and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017).

And yet tellingly, The Smashing Machine doesn’t dismantle Johnson’s screen persona so much as identify its dark recessive gene, gracefully matching the actor with his subject. One might say that Kerr is the part he was born to play: a plausible, professional man of violence who has learned to hold himself in check.

Johnson was once a smashing machine himself, the heavyweight artist formerly known as The Rock. He’s the teenage delinquent turned WWF superstar who parlayed sporting celebrity into a topline Hollywood career. As befits a pro wrestler, Johnson is brilliant at leveraging his influence and drumming up business and his ambassadorial, outward-facing attitude stands in stark contrast to that of most of his peers. He’s an Instagram sensation (392 million followers) and a registered independent who plays well to all quadrants (young and old, male and female). He’s charismatic and self-deprecating; he’s amiable and quick-witted. He could kill you but he won’t, because he’d rather be your friend. This, it occurs, might be the definition of a successful action hero.

Hollywood likes working with athletes because they have name recognition and look as if they might be able to perform their own stunts. It’s a partnership that extends back to Esther Williams and Johnny Weissmuller and runs the gamut from Arnold Schwarzenegger to OJ Simpson, the former NFL running back who starred in The Towering Inferno (1974) and The Naked Gun franchise and was famously passed over for The Terminator (1984) on account of being “too nice”. The Rock has similarly built his reputation on playing good guys and saviour types.

It’s been said that Gene Hackman had the hardest, scariest smile in movies, but Johnson’s sunny blast is just as alarming in its way. It’s deployed to great effect in The Smashing Machine, as Kerr politely asks a fellow airline passenger to lift the shade so that he can see the sunset, or when he cajoles a nervous chemist into writing a prescription. Kerr is a big man and knows he looks intimidating.