Will Dwayne Johnson always be The Rock?

Over the past couple of weeks, two expensive, auteur-driven films with big stars have been released at the American box office, both conscious throwbacks to the kind of Seventies cinema that isn’t supposed to be made any longer. In the case of Paul Thomas Anderson, his Leo DiCaprio-starring Thomas Pynchon fantasia One Battle After Another seems to have been a success by the skin of its (yellowed) teeth: it has already made over $100 million worldwide, helped by excellent reviews and strong word of mouth. But in the case of another A-lister, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the critical and commercial reception of The Smashing Machine has been rather more muted, suggesting that audiences know what they want from Johnson, and it sure as hell isn’t arthouse fare.

There comes a point in the careers of many actors who are so bored of being pigeonholed as musclebound lunks that they take on an altogether more challenging and interesting role. Stallone did it in Copland, Jean-Claude Van Damme appeared as himself in the decidedly meta JCVD and Mickey Rourke nearly won an Oscar for The Wrestler, the picture that most closely resembles Johnson’s attempt at respectability. While the last of these was based on a fictitious wrestler, Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine tells the life story of the wrestler and MMA fighter Mark Kerr – who is still very much with us. It is constrained by biography, as well, inevitably, an obligation to present its protagonist in a reasonably positive light.

Johnson is an actor who has always excelled at being liked. Even reports of some of his more bizarre off-screen behavior – urinating in water bottles and handing them to assistants, tardy timekeeping on set, a strange feud with his Fast and Furious co-star Vin Diesel – have done little to tarnish his appeal. His blockbuster films are usually successful, though he was unable to begin his own superhero franchise with DC’s Black Adam, in which he was more convincing as the heroic than villainous incarnation of the character. He appeared to be sliding into well-paid self-parody over the past few years, coasting on screen with a practiced charm that at times saw him turn into a more musclebound version of “Alright, alright, alright” era Matthew McConaughey. Escaping from a straitjacket was a skill that Houdini perfected; might Johnson do the same?

The major problem with The Smashing Machine, and the reason for its lackluster box office performance, is that it does not appear to know who it has been made for. Audiences who want a rousing sports film with their hero in the lead will be disappointed, on the grounds that Safdie – best known for co-directing the anxiety-inducing Uncut Gems with his brother Josh – has made a strangely muted, decidedly unheroic version of Kerr’s life, which offers almost random vignettes of his existence rather than sticking to any conventional biographical narrative, and concluding in a downbeat, almost shrugging fashion. Yet A24 habitués, who are far more likely to enjoy the film, are also not the obvious audience for a film about MMA that stars the man formerly known as The Rock. Hence the disappointing opening weekend (a mere $6 million at the box office, a third of what it was expected to make) and the indifferent-to-poor response from audiences, who awarded the picture a poor B- CinemaScore.

There is no denying Johnson’s commitment to the part, which he undoubtedly hoped would win him an Oscar. (The film won the Silver Bear at the Venice Film Festival, the second highest accolade.) He is unrecognizable as Kerr, thanks to prosthetics and a wig, and he manages to strip away any vestige of his usual persona to portray a big, frustrated man whose almost comical disparity in size with his wife, Emily Blunt’s Dawn Staples, makes their scenes together both humorous and poignant. It is, by any reckoning, a brave, even daring performance, which attempts to shrug off the bondage of The Rock forever, but audiences refuse to accept him, or it.

Johnson will, of course, be fine. There is a supposedly final Fast and Furious film coming in 2027, which he will be returning for, and, more interestingly, there is a new Martin Scorsese film, billed as a Hawaii-set answer to Goodfellas and The Departed, which is also set to reunite the wrestler-turned-actor with Blunt again alongside Scorsese’s usual collaborator DiCaprio. Yet The Smashing Machine’s failure will undoubtedly hurt more than all his various bouts in the ring, and even this most cheerful and charismatic of public figures might be forgiven for experiencing a twinge of self-doubt as a result. Can Dwayne Johnson, actor, ever be taken seriously? The jury, alas, remains out.