Film is framed as a battleground where love, hate, action, violence, death, and emotions converge. Four disparate films share a central focus on emotions: twisted, revisited, and sometimes buried. Benny Safdie's The Smashing Machine follows Dwayne Johnson as Mark Kerr, a real-life mixed-martial-arts pioneer who rises through international victories and then becomes drawn to more dangerous impulses. His chief allies include girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt) and colleague/rival Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader). Early triumphs foreground the addictive rush of winning; subsequent loss triggers a taut, upsetting crisis of confidence that propels the narrative and reveals Johnson's formidable screen presence.
Quoth Fuller: "Film is like a battleground ... It's love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word, emotions!" The four films I'll speak about here could not be more disparate on a superficial level. But they are all ultimately about emotions. Emotions twisted, emotions turned over and over again, emotions running wild, and emotions all but buried. Benny Safdie's "The Smashing Machine,"
The movie treats just a few years of Kerr's life, first as he goes from victory to victory, climbing in the hierarchy of his sport, which is international-a lot of his bouts are in Japan-but not organized in as conglomerated a way as it has become. His biggest allies are his girlfriend Dawn ( Emily Blunt), who marches about in tight jeans and a push-up bra under her clingy low-cut sweaters, and is his brashest cheerleader,
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