True to its name, The Smashing Machine is an exercise in brutality, full of crashes, fights and collisions leaving shards, both orthopedic and emotional. The 2002 documentary tour de force chronicles the rise and fall of Mark Kerr, d/b/a the Smashing Machine, a hard-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside Ohio fighter. Now comes the scripted version. Dwayne Johnson, d/b/a The Rock, plays Kerr in the film of the same name, which releases on Oct. 3, and enters the fray carrying the distinct whiff of Oscar nominations.
The movie tells the story of Kerr, a hulking college wrestler who then launched a career in the punk rock sport of mixed martial arts. All was going, well, smashingly … until it wasn’t. Until he went from smasher to smashee. In an arresting early scene, Kerr sits in a doctor’s waiting room, alongside other patients seeking bunion removals and strep throat swabs and the like. Kerr is seeing the doctor for another reason: He needs his face put back together.
