A few hours ago a friend texted that Benny Safdie‘s The Smashing Machine (A24, 10.3) “felt a bit flat.”
HE RESPONSE: “Yeah, maybe a bit but it mainly felt real and honest and committed to avoiding the usual sports-saga tropes…a probing, hand-held verite thing that adheres to an atmosphere that feels like lived-in reality.”
I was generally pleased with Johnson, whom I’ve found annoying for years, for having actually dug into a role and delivered in intimate, actorish terms…startling! I only know that I believed his Mark Kerr. Pain and Gain aside, Johnson has played the same, strapping, canned-dialogue icon in all his previous films, which have mostly been formulaic shit. He dropped the pose this time.
And Johnson’s argument scenes with Emily Blunt‘s Dawn Staples, whom Kerr was married to for roughly 15 years, touch bottom. Staples is portrayed as half a traditional heart-of-gold girlfriend, and half a pain-in-the-ass egotist who “cares” but is primarily focused on her own life designs — the very definition of a non-Zen partner.
Cheers also for Ryan Bader, who plays Kerr’s best friend Mark Coleman with relaxed assurance and conviction.