THE SMASHING MACHINE (2025)

Here's the case for going. Dwayne Johnson gives what may be the finest performance of his career as real-life fighter Mark Kerr — soft-spoken, wounded, dangerous. Emily Blunt matches him beat for beat as his volatile girlfriend, and Ryan Bader is a warm counterweight as Kerr's steady, family-man training partner. By the end, the film lands on something Scripture would recognize: winning isn't everything; love and friendship are.

Here's the case for caution. This is an R-rated film with heavy profanity throughout, brutal cage-fighting violence, an addiction storyline, and a relationship that escalates into disturbing territory before it resolves. None of it is gratuitous exploitation — it's the honest cost of the world this film depicts — but it is not a film to walk into unprepared.

If you're an adult who can watch hard things without harm to your own conscience, this is a genuinely excellent film. If you're choosing for your teenager, weigh the content carefully first. Watch it as an adult, thoughtfully — not as a family movie night.

Mark Kerr — nicknamed "The Smashing Machine" — is a hulking, soft-voiced former NCAA wrestling champion who becomes one of the most dominant fighters in the sport's early years, from 1997 to 2000. In the ring, he's nearly unbeatable. Outside it, he's quiet, almost gentle — except when his girlfriend Dawn knows exactly which buttons to push.

As Mark chases bigger paydays in Tokyo's Pride tournaments, cracks start to show: a painkiller habit he can't admit to, and a relationship that runs hotter than either of them can control.

Four stars means this one earns its praise. Dwayne Johnson disappears into Mark Kerr — the deliberate walk, the pussycat voice masking real power, the tears when a loss he didn't deserve gets called a "no contest." It's a performance built on control, which makes the moments he loses it land hard. Emily Blunt is nearly unrecognizable as Dawn, swinging convincingly between infuriating and tender, sometimes in the same scene. Ryan Bader rounds things out as the one steady man in Mark's orbit.

The film also cuts away from the worst of the fight brutality while showing just enough to make its violence felt rather than gawked at. The structure — an early comic interview that returns later to haunt Mark — shows a filmmaker in control of his material. This is craft in service of character, and it shows.

At its center, this film believes something true: winning is not the same as living well. Mark Kerr spends most of the story consumed by his profession — by fighting, by money, by being the best — and the film doesn't pretend that's admirable. It's his friend Mark Coleman, a steady family man, who models something better. By the end, Kerr himself discovers that friendship and caring for the people closest to him matter more than any belt. That's a genuinely biblical instinct, even if the film never names God as its source.

The cost of getting there is steep. The film doesn't sanitize addiction, violence, or a relationship that runs on conflict as much as affection — it lets viewers feel the weight of all three before it offers any resolution. That honesty is part of what makes the ending land; it isn't cheap.

Scripture asks a version of the same question this film asks about winning: "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?" (Mark 8:36). Mark Kerr's story, at its best, is an answer in the making.

This is a film that takes winning seriously enough to show you what it costs — and loving well seriously enough to show you what it's worth. Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt do career-best work here. But the language, violence, and relationship content are real, and they're not for younger viewers. So: worth the trip — adults only. Looking for something for the whole family instead? Start with our latest family-friendly picks.