Benny Safdie has written and directed a solid bro drama for the UFC fanbase and maybe a little way beyond. It is about the central crisis in the life of man-mountain Mark Kerr, America’s pioneering MMA and ultimate fighting champ, who in 1997 found himself in the ring, or maybe the cage, with his demons after the unthinkable humiliation of losing for the first time.
This feature is in fact developed from a 2002 documentary about Kerr with the same title. He confronted his substance abuse, relationship anxieties and the question of what the heck life is for if you can’t simply win all the time. Kerr is played by Dwayne Johnson, a colossus of muscle topped off with a head the size of Indiana Jones’s boulder, a body on which the only visible fat is rippling at the nape of his neck. Johnson’s appearance is modified by close-cut frizzy hair and facial prosthetics that make him look like Jon Favreau playing the Hulk. No other casting was remotely possible – not unless Timothée Chalamet fancied bulking up. (Sacha Baron Cohen could do it these days, and would probably want to play it every bit as seriously and non-satirically as Johnson.)
