'Smashing Machine' pulls no punches

Director Benny Safdie and the production crew knuckled down to make sure the mixed martial arts matches in the film looked as authentic as possible

- Story by Bob Strauss

IF YOU CAME OUT OF "THE Smashing Machine" thinking "that must have hurt," it was by design Director Benny Safdie strove to make his biopic about pioneering mixed martial arts fighter Mark Kerr (played by a barely recognizable Dwayne Johnson) as true to the sport's brutal 1990s ring action as could possibly be simulated.

With the 2002 Kerr documentary of the same name and vintage cage-fight footage as guides, Safdie and his team of actors — which included current MMA stars and championship athletes — stuntmen, camera people and sound experts established formal rules to make every slam, punch and knee to the head reverberate all the way to the cheap seats.

“We were very, very specific to the way the fights actually happened," says Safdie (“Uncut Gems”), whose own boxing training sparked his interest in making this his first solo feature-directing effort without brother Josh. “Yes, they're condensed, because some of them were very long, 20, 30 minutes. But I wanted to do justice to what those fights were, historically.”

Much rougher than what we see today, that is.

Prizewinning MMA fighter Ryan Bader makes his acting debut in “Smashing Machine” as Kerr's colleague and close friend Mark Coleman. While he adjusted to life as a thespian pretty quickly, play-punching was a matter of not mixing messages for the former wrestling champion.