As I posted from Venice on 9.1, Benny Safdie‘s The Smashing Machine (A24) is a reasonably decent, at times almost refreshingly offbeat film because it doesn’t deliver the usual formulaic cowflop that Dwayne Johnson movies have been shoveling for too many years.
On top of which Johnson’s lead performance as Mark Kerr is earnest, dug-in, totally respectable.
So why did Smashing make only a lousy $6M this weekend? My guess is that Joe and Jane Popcorn took one quick look at Johnson’s black curly wig and said “nope, no way.” Just a hunch.
