Dwayne Johnson is a big-hearted, approachable Hollywood star who could snap you like a twig without so much as working up a sweat. He almost certainly wouldn’t do it because the man is a mensch, both on-camera and off, but there is always the chance that he might, if he properly lost his rag and momentarily saw red. He knows it and we know it and this tense shared understanding may be part of his appeal.
In Johnson’s new film, The Smashing Machine, the 53-year-old actor portrays MMA fighter Mark Kerr, “255 pounds of pure muscle”, who is working to wean himself off an addiction to opioids. At home, newly sober, Kerr notes that his girlfriend Dawn (played by Emily Blunt) has for some reason put semi-skimmed milk in his smoothie. It’s no big deal, he assures her, he simply assumed she would know he prefers whole milk, just as he assumed she would remember to prune his favourite cactus and to fish those disgusting leaves out of the pool.
