The film centers on Mark Kerr, a towering MMA champion who faces an identity crisis after his first professional loss in 1997. The narrative follows his confrontation with substance abuse, relationship anxieties, and the existential question of life beyond constant winning. Dwayne Johnson portrays Kerr with heavy prosthetics and a hulking physique, while Ryan Bader appears as Mark Coleman. The plot tracks Kerr's journey through throwing away opioids, entering rehab, and repairing important relationships. The film draws on the same subject matter as a 2002 documentary and evokes the early days of MMA competition in Japan under the Pride banner.
It is about the central crisis in the life of man-mountain Mark Kerr, America's pioneering MMA and ultimate fighting champ, who in 1997 found himself in the ring, or maybe the cage, with his demons after the unthinkable humiliation of losing for the first time. This feature is in fact developed from a 2002 documentary about Kerr with the same title. He confronted his substance abuse, relationship anxieties and the question of what the heck life is for if you can't simply win
Kerr is played by Dwayne Johnson, a colossus of muscle topped off with a head the size of Indiana Jones's boulder, a body on which the only visible fat is rippling at the nape of his neck. Johnson's appearance is modified by close-cut frizzy hair and facial prosthetics that make him look like Jon Favreau playing the Hulk. No other casting was remotely possible not unless Timothee Chalamet fancied bulking up.
The terrible, existential nightmare of losing a possibility for which no one in Kerr's professional or personal circle appeared to have prepared him causes that giant statue of a man to wobble and topple. Kerr has to throw his opioids in the trash, enter rehab and deal again with the important people in his life; one of them is his best buddy, sometime coach and fighting rival Mark Coleman,
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