Benny Safdie’s solo directorial debut, a bruising, subdued character study based on the life of the 1990s mixed martial arts (MMA) pioneer Mark Kerr, is not so much a sports movie as an anti-sports one.
It eschews the punch-the-air moments that define the genre for quiet implosion, unhappy domesticity and total burnout. It’s a story about the other guys: the ones who don’t become brand ambassadors.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, trading blockbuster bombast for bruised vulnerability, has seldom been better as he channels Kerr’s rise and fall during the early, uncertain years of UFC mixed martial arts.
Nearly unrecognisable beneath Kazu Hiro’s impressive prosthetics, the actor gives a carefully calibrated, contemplative performance. His hulking frame remains, but the charisma that made him a franchise star is dialled down, replaced with a haunted, caught-in-the-headlights detachment.
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It’s a subtle portrait of a man addicted not to opioids but to victory, and an unhealthy romantic attachment. When he finally loses, both in the ring and in life, it’s almost a release.
Safdie stages the fights with documentary restraint, avoiding the visceral glamour and stylish flourishes that define movies ringside. The real brutality is interior and familial.
But the depiction of Kerr’s relationship with the brassy Dawn (Emily Blunt) falters. In common with the film’s reckoning with the hero’s substance abuse, the gloves never come off, so we’re left with a coy portrait of marital discord defined by repetitive, pointless arguments and the destruction of flimsy homeware.
Blunt works hard to flesh out an underwritten role, but Safdie seems more interested in Kerr’s silences than his partner’s complaints. The relationship is too ill-defined to land an emotional punch.
Keeping time with Johnson’s internal turn, Nala Sinephro’s minimalist score hums with quiet menace. It’s a world away from both the tragic grandiloquence of The Iron Claw and the contemporary star-making incarnation of the UFC. Expect to see Johnson in the mix when awards season comes around.
In cinemas from Friday
