| A24 | Release Date: October 3, 2025 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
|
Positive:
35
Mixed:
20
Negative:
1
|
Critic Reviews
Oct 2, 2025
Safdie recognizes that The Smashing Machine is a single-purpose invention, one built to run on the blood, sweat and sometimes even the tears of Dwayne Johnson. Consider the act of watching the movie a double dose of cinematic benevolence: rewarding yourself, and saving the star from his own worst Hollywood instincts. Two birds, one Rock.
Read full review
Oct 1, 2025
Johnson never fully disappears into the role, but were he to do so, it might almost diminish his performance — one which never distracts from the narrative, but keeps present the awareness that Johnson is really going through it here. If he made it look easy, it somehow wouldn’t be quite as impressive.
Read full review
The PlaylistSep 1, 2025
Despite this welcome insight into the muddy rules of their relationship, the approach to Kerr’s addiction is the only time “The Smashing Machine” feels a tad slight, the filmmaker proving perhaps a bit too close to its subject to properly gnaw at the ugliness of chemical dependency and rehabilitation.
Read full review
IndieWireSep 1, 2025
Johnson’s performance is out-and-out wonderful, a beady-eyed fusion of body and spirit that osmoses Safdie’s sensibility to deliver what can’t be disputed as the most layered work of the actor’s career. A vividly contradictory Blunt, funny and sad especially in articulating Dawn’s conflicted response to Mark’s post-rehab emotional about-face during a tense argument, is equally sensational.
Read full review
SlashfilmSep 23, 2025
For audiences curious to know the ins and outs of the early days of MMA fighting, you'd be better served by watching the 2002 documentary. If, however, you're more curious about the people involved, and if you're someone who feels like either a winner or a loser (or, more to the point, both at once) in life's big match, then The Smashing Machine is for you.
Read full review
Sep 1, 2025
The Smashing Machine may not always transcend genre conventions, but is a consistently idiosyncratic and candid look at a working-class athlete with a complicated romantic relationship and a crippling opioid addiction. Despite his hulking physique, Dwayne Johnson plays Kerr with real vulnerability as his championship aspirations slip away.
Read full review
The IndependentSep 1, 2025
The real way Safdie puts a chokehold on his audience is by examining Mark and Dawn’s physical and emotional weaknesses in such forensic detail. The Smashing Machine may not provide the pay-offs that audiences expect from more conventional sports movies, but this is the most raw and vulnerable that Johnson has ever been on screen. Once you’ve seen him this exposed, you won’t watch his typical action movie stunts in quite the same way ever again.
Read full review
Oct 7, 2025
It becomes clear that Safdie is intentionally denying a big, flashy “win the game” kind of film, offering instead a cerebral examination of the quotidian, workmanlike drudgery of being a professional athlete who never became a superstar household name, still shouldering the work, the struggle, the bad days, quibbling over contracts and rules, taking every hit without complaint.
Read full review
Sep 30, 2025
Not all the swings land in “The Smashing Machine.” Which is fine, given how hard Johnson hits (and gets hit) with this fascinating shift in his acting. Going to the mat here with the role of his life – so far at least – shows a performer whose true potential we're just now finally seeing.
Read full review
RogerEbert.comSep 10, 2025
The Film StageSep 1, 2025
Sep 1, 2025
Sports biopics are so common that one couldn’t blame Safdie for trying to avoid conventionality, but sometimes the conventions are there for a good reason. In the end, though, he understands that his greatest weapon here is his star. A weapon, and a gift: It’s nice to have the Rock acting again.
Read full review
Oct 2, 2025
The fight scenes are initially impressive and artfully filmed, but eventually repetitive. As a selling device for UFC, The Smashing Machine falls a little short. Still, even if it seems like we’ve seen this movie before, Johnson does sell his character, no gimmicks, raised eyebrows or phony theatrics. He is believable, even if we never really discover who he is.
Read full review
Oct 2, 2025
The film, anchored by a towering performance from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Mark Kerr, is at once a sports drama, an addiction-and-recovery story, a tale of toxic romantic love, and an ode to male friendship. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fully succeed as any of these, because with so many elements competing, none has the room to truly emerge.
Read full review
LooperSep 11, 2025
The meta-narrative of where The Smashing Machine fits into Johnson's career is more interesting than the film itself, which I found a bit of a bore. Johnson's performance is good enough, and Emily Blunt is truly transformative as Kerr's unstable wife Dawn Staples, but neither get that much to do beyond repeat the same sort of fights (physical or verbal) over the course of two hours in a film that fails to justify why we should be so interested.
Read full review
The Film VerdictOct 3, 2025
Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
