The Best MMA Movie of All Time? The Smashing Machine Preview!

A24 and Benny Safdie aren’t asking Dwayne Johnson to hit harder—they’re asking him to drop the armor. Early footage of The Smashing Machine suggests a raw, ego-less turn as UFC legend Mark Kerr, a man who bulldozed the late ’90s fight scene while his life frayed at the edges.

Why it matters: This is shaping up to be Johnson’s riskiest pivot: a character-first descent into pressure, dependency, and love under strain, not another victory lap.

• Johnson disappears into Mark Kerr, trading swagger for silence and shame—on purpose.
• Benny Safdie writes, directs, and edits, promising claustrophobic realism over sports-movie sugar.
• Emily Blunt’s Dawn Staples looks like the emotional fulcrum, not a backdrop.
• Trailers sell transformation, pressure, and a relationship on the brink, with one risk: less tidy narrative, more grit.
• Premiered at Venice; wide release slated for October 3, 2025, with a Toronto stop in between—classic awards-season positioning.

Here’s the headline: The Smashing Machine is a biographical sports drama that places character above carnage. Johnson plays Mark Kerr, a decorated wrestler turned MMA force who crushed tournaments in the Pride FC era even as painkillers, public pressure, and a fragile relationship gnawed away off-camera. With A24 backing and Benny Safdie at the helm, the film looks less interested in highlight reels and more in the psychological invoice that success demands.

The texture jumps off the screen: sweat, tape, ammonia, and the ring-side hush right before the bell. This isn’t glossy action choreography; it’s the sound of a life under load.

Kerr’s dominance was real. So were the cracks. The 2002 HBO documentary already showed the toll: injuries, dependence, and the shrapnel that hits the people who love you. Safdie’s take doesn’t romanticize the grind; it interrogates it. Why does reaching the peak so often come with a receipt? That’s the hook—and it’s what elevates the film from “sports biopic” to “human fallout study.”

For Johnson, the danger isn’t the training camp—it’s breaking the image he spent a career building. The trailers linger on the unflattering details movies usually cut away from: cauliflower ear, busted knuckles, and the hollowed-out stare after a bad round. The camera gets close enough that every inhale sounds like a question.

Benny Safdie (co-creator of Good Time and Uncut Gems) knows how to stage panic like a horror sequence. He’s not just directing; he’s editing—a tell that the film’s rhythm, anxiety, and empathy will be tightly controlled from the same chair. Expect handheld immediacy and lived-in pacing over inspirational montage fireworks.

The supporting cast is a statement of intent:

• Emily Blunt as Dawn Staples brings precision timing and emotional gravity. From the footage, she’s not scenery; she’s the line between the man and the machine.
• Combat world ringers—including Bas Rutten and Oleksandr Usyk—sprinkle the canvas with authenticity, the kind you can’t fake when you know what a real scramble looks like.
• Music by Nala Sinephro hints at a textured, possibly haunted soundscape, trading bombast for a score that breathes with the character.

It’s the kind of creative package that screams: we’re telling the truth, even when it stings.

Kerr wasn’t an underdog fable; he was the guy heavyweights dreaded seeing on a tournament bracket. The HBO lens showed the contrast: legendary strength in the cage, fragile scaffolding outside it. Safdie’s version appears to flip the usual sports-movie order of operations. Instead of building to the big win, it keeps asking what the wins cost—to the body, to the mind, to a relationship that can’t survive the grind.

That shift matters. It dodges the easy uplift of a training montage and leans into the kind of messy, elliptical truth that defines a life rather than a season.

1) Transformation without vanity. The camera doesn’t flatter Johnson; it studies him. The focus is tactile—ears, knuckles, tape burns, and the thousand-yard stare you only get after your brain’s been rattled. It’s anti-superhero coverage by design.

2) Pressure as the villain. Coaches, promoters, doctors, fans—everybody wants a piece. The ring is brutally simple; everything around it is the maze. That’s classic Safdie territory, and it fits Kerr’s moment in time like a glove that’s one fight past retirement.

3) Relationship stakes that matter. Blunt’s Dawn feels like the film’s heartbeat. The tension isn’t just “will he win?” It’s will there be anything left of him if he does? The emotional drama tilts toward whether that line between man and machine holds or snaps.

The risk: Early critical chatter (including a Rotten Tomatoes snapshot) praises the raw voltage but flags a potential trade-off: grit over narrative tidiness. That can mean abrupt endings, elliptical transitions, or sequences that privilege feeling over clean resolution. If you need a neat bow, you might not get one. That might also be the point.

One striking choice: the cinematography often keeps ropes and chain link in the shot. Even outside the cage, scenes feel fenced in, like the pressure follows Kerr into every room. Fight sequences are cut to breathe just long enough for you to wince before the next scramble, respecting the rhythm of a real exchange instead of turning it into music-video spectacle.

You’ll spot real fighters and commentators in quick flashes. For fans who know the difference between a work (a staged contest in pro wrestling) and a war (an MMA grind you feel in your molars), those touches matter. They keep the fights from reading like choreography and nudge them toward lived experience.

Safdie’s edit appears to favor observed moments—the silent wrap of a hand, the awkward pause with a doctor, the glance that says “not tonight”—over motivational slogans. It’s how you keep a life like Kerr’s from boiling down to a poster on a gym wall.

Will audiences buy Dwayne Johnson—global franchise anchor—as a man who can’t bench-press his way out of entropy? The trailers argue yes, because the performance turns inward. Less charm, more quiet. Less smirk, more visible shame. If Johnson holds that line without blinking back into Movie Star Mode, The Smashing Machine could redraw his career the way The Wrestler reframed Mickey Rourke.

If he can’t? The film still looks built to stand as a gripping Safdie character study, where the nervous system is the special effect.

The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is slated for a wide release on October 3, 2025, with a Toronto stop in between. That timeline reads like textbook awards positioning. Early festival response points to serious attention on Johnson’s performance, the kind that starts conversations beyond fight-fan circles.

What to watch next:

• How critics frame the balance between authenticity and narrative closure.
• Whether Blunt’s Dawn is recognized not just as support, but as co-equal emotional lead.
• The reaction from MMA and wrestling communities, who can smell inauthenticity from a mile away.
• Awards chatter around performance, editing, and sound, given how much the film seems to lean on texture and rhythm.

Mark your calendar for October 3. This looks like a movie best seen with an audience that gasps in the same places.

The Smashing Machine is shaping up to be that rare sports film that cares less about the belt and more about the bruises you can’t show. If Johnson locks into Kerr’s quiet—if he wears the shame and the silence as convincingly as he wears muscle—this could be the career inflection point people bring up years from now when they talk about his range. And even if it chooses grit over neatness, the result may be exactly what this story demands: truth over triumphalism.