Written and Directed by Bennie Safdie | 123 min | ▲▲▲1/2 

I have a lot of time for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He’s the wrestler-turned-actor who has best exemplified the star power of someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger for the 21st Century. He’s got the charisma and the physique, for sure. He’s also the most risk-averse star in the Hollywood pantheon, to the point where it’s been a long time since I’ve been especially interested in a movie where he’s the lead because they tend to be so unadventurous. The last few I’ve seen — Red One, Black Adam, and Jungle Cruise — have been just awful.

So, given that, it’s a pleasure to see Johnson stretch, more figuratively than literally though he does both in this movie. This teams him up with his Jungle Cruise costar, Emily Blunt, but this time they manage to locate a little chemistry in a far better script from Uncut Gems co-helmer Safdie. Just like that film, The Smashing Machine explores that very American of concerns: winning at all costs. When winning is like a drug, what does that do to a person? And what happens that time he doesn’t win? How do you learn to lose when all you’ve known is winning?

In that, The Smashing Machine deftly undermines some of the Rocky-adjacent sports movie tropes, while at the same time occasionally indulging in them. The first half of the movie is entirely character-driven and mostly away from the combat as we get to know Mark Kerr (Johnson), a mixed-martial artist in the late ’90s, the early days of the sport when it was reaching for legitimacy — a lot of the events took place in Japan, maybe because the regulations there were looser. I wished the film offered more detail about the administration of what was the UFC, and the money, or maybe the lack of it. Kerr is based on an actual fighter, and Safdie based this movie on a documentary by the same name about him.

The character creation here is impressive: the erasure of Johnson’s tats, the hair, and some solid prosthetic work changes some of his most familiar features while preserving his massive form, which we see a lot of — there’s a shot where he’s in a tiny, red Mercedes sports car with Blunt and it’s hilarious how he dwarfs her and the car, like a Masters Of The Universe action figure in a Hot Wheels.

Blunt is his girlfriend, Dawn, who I don’t think has ever played this brand of white trash American before and she’s convincing. There’s a lot of turmoil in the relationship, and their scenes together sizzle, but if there’s a weak point in the movie it’s that she’s not given nearly enough screen time to allow us to understand the breadth and depth of her emotional landscape. We bounce in and out of their home life, but it doesn’t do her performance justice.

It’s no secret, it’s right there in the trailer — Mark is addicted to prescription pain meds, and when he does lose a match, his whole identity, in tandem with his addiction, spirals into catastrophe.  This is where the movie is most impressive, the character portrait Johnson serves up of someone entirely unprepared for failure, while also offering a side look at a most masculine competitive environment.

The way the film frames the athletes, it’s like they’re part of a brotherhood. Kerr himself is incredibly kind and considerate to everyone he meets, despite the violence inherent in his profession, and the filmmakers do a terrific job showing how friendship and compassion between the competitors helped sustain Kerr in his most difficult times — full marks to supporting work from actual fighters Ryan Bader and Bas Rutten, his buddies in the ring and the octagon.

Also worth mentioning are a couple of fantastic needle drops — a training montage scored to Elvis Presley’s version of Paul Anka’s “My Way,” and all the gone-to-seed energy that brings — and a knock down, drag out domestic between Mark and Dawn scored to Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungleland.” It’ll be hard to listen to either song again and not think about The Smashing Machine.