Sightlines · reception
How The Smashing Machine was received
2025 · Benny Safdie · The Smashing Machine on Sightlines
The arc
Premiered at Venice 2025 to a huge tearful ovation and instant Oscar-frontrunner buzz for Dwayne Johnson, then face-planted at the box office with one of the worst wide-release openings of his career — the awards narrative deflated almost as fast as it inflated.
What’s debated
The endless debate: is Johnson's transformation a genuinely great performance trapped in a deliberately muted, undramatic movie, or does the film's restraint prove the hype was for the stunt casting rather than the film?
Its footprint
The unrecognizable-Rock-in-prosthetics stills and the clip of Johnson crying through the Venice standing ovation did more cultural rounds than the film itself — it became shorthand for the 'movie star begs to be taken seriously' arc.
Where it stands
Too new for a settled place, but among cinephiles it's already fixed as Exhibit A in the Safdie-brothers-split discourse — Benny's solo statement, endlessly compared against whatever Josh does without him.
Did you know? Benny Safdie won the Silver Lion for Best Director at the 2025 Venice Film Festival for this, his first feature directed without his brother Josh.
Named by the director
- The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr (2002) — Safdie repeatedly cited John Hyams's HBO documentary as both the source and the stylistic template — he wanted his film to carry the same fly-on-the-wall documentary feel.