With 'Smashing Machine,' a Safdie comes out swinging

Benny Safdie's solo debut takes on the life of an MMA fighter

- BY MARK OLSEN

Benny Safdie's eyes begin to well up at the memory of it. At September's world premiere of his new film "The Smashing Machine" at the Venice Film Festival, during an intense, emotional scene near the end of the movie, the filmmaker noticed that Mark Kerr, sitting next to him and on whose life the story is based, had begun to sob. Safdie, who had also started to cry, took Kerr's hand.

"So literally, for the rest of the movie, we just held on tight," Safdie says as he presses two fingers to his eye to hold back a tear while sitting in a tucked-away corner meeting room at the West Hollywood offices of the film's distributor, A24, earlier this week.

These may seem unexpected responses to a film that, right off the bat, showcases brutal, bloody mixed martial arts fighting. Kerr was one of the sport's earliest champions, before it became a multibillion-dollar enterprise and his career was derailed by an addiction to painkillers.

Set mostly during the years 1997 to 2000, "The Smashing Machine" stars Dwayne Johnson in a performance of dramatic depth that pulls from his own experience as a professional wrestler before launching a career as a Hollywood superstar. Johnson's Kerr becomes an extremely sympathetic figure even as his own questionable decisions lay the groundwork for his downfall, while much of the story focuses on his volatile relationship with girlfriend Dawn Staples, played by Johnson's “Jungle Cruise” costar Emily Blunt.

BENNY SAFDIE makes his solo feature debut with “The Smashing Machine.”

(IAN SPANIER For The Times)

That the real-life Kerr would have such an visceral response to watching it was validating for the 39-year-old Safdie, who wrote, directed and edited the movie and is also a producer on the project, as is Johnson.