Dwayne Johnson is used to big nights. Glamorous premieres and thunderous applause are routine for the 53-year-old action superstar.
But Monday night wasn’t like anything Johnson had experienced before because “The Smashing Machine,” getting its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, is unlike any movie he’s ever made. A naturalistic drama about a mixed martial arts fighter struggling with doubt and drug addiction, “The Smashing Machine” proves that Johnson can do much more than simply outrace explosions and glower at Vin Diesel.
Critics here have been high on his performance, with some predicting that it could earn Johnson his first Oscar nomination. And during the premiere, as the audience gave him the most sustained standing ovation of the festival so far, Johnson was moved to tears.
At the film’s after-party, he was more composed but no less appreciative. As well-wishers like Seth Rogen and Julian Schnabel mingled, Johnson told me that this was only his second time attending a major film festival, after “Southland Tales” received a critical drubbing at Cannes nearly 20 years ago.
“Tonight’s a little different,” he said with a grin. “But if you want something so bad, you have to manifest it.”
You might not have guessed that this is something Johnson wanted because for a long time, he wasn’t sure, either. Earlier that day, at the news conference for “The Smashing Machine,” Johnson confessed that he had begun to lose his way in Hollywood. After perennial installments of the “Fast and Furious” and “Jumanji” franchises and other action vehicles like “Black Adam” and “Red Notice,” he wondered whether he was still capable of doing much else.
“The truth is, I looked around a few years ago and I started to think, ‘Am I living my dream or am I living other people’s dreams?’” he said.
If Johnson had become too wedded to his public image as an action hero, “The Smashing Machine” offers a smart segue, drawing on aspects of his wrestling persona while opening the door to more complex dramatic work. Directed by Benny Safdie, it stars Johnson as Mark Kerr, an M.M.A. fighter who made his name during the early days of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. When we first meet Kerr in 1997, he has never lost a fight, though each of his few-holds-barred matches has clearly taken its toll.
Head butts and kicks to the cranium are common, and Kerr, an upbeat guy who crows, “A day without pain is like a day without sunshine,” has developed an opioid addiction just to get back in the ring. His longtime girlfriend, Dawn (Emily Blunt), urges him to stop using, but their relationship is so tempestuous that it could threaten any stab at sobriety. And though his friend Mark (played by the real-life M.M.A. fighter Ryan Bader) offers moral support, both men have their eyes on a U.F.C. title bout that could set them up to do brutal battle.
You may think you know where this all is going, since there’s certainly no shortage of movies in which high achievers battle personal demons in pursuit of greatness. But “The Smashing Machine” and Johnson’s performance prove more idiosyncratic than expected. The film unfolds in a fly-on-the-wall minor key that feels almost like eavesdropping on close friends, and Johnson resists big, showy acting choices, instead dialing Mark back so the smallest gestures — like forcing a smile through pain — hit even harder.
Will Oscar voters take to his transformation? They typically like it when an A-list star is willing to stretch, though Johnson is entering a best-actor race that will be crowded with other huge names like Leonardo DiCaprio (“One Battle After Another”), George Clooney (“Jay Kelly”), Timothée Chalamet (“Marty Supreme”) and Michael B. Jordan (“Sinners”).
Still, Johnson has signaled that this is no one-off: Even though he’ll be seen next year in a live-action adaptation of “Moana,” he wants to continue finding roles that test him instead of defaulting to mainstream crowd-pleasers.
“The box office in our business, as we know, is very loud and it can be very resounding and it can push you into a category, into a corner: This is your lane and this is what you do and this is what people want you to do,” he said at the news conference. Though he doesn’t regret making those movies, “I just had this burning desire and voice that was saying, ‘What if there is more? What if I can?’”
Johnson said that until “The Smashing Machine,” he had been too scared to take on a role that would require him to be so raw onscreen.
“A lot of times, it’s harder for us — or at least for me — sometimes to know what you’re capable of when you’ve been pigeonholed,” he said. “Sometimes it takes people that you love and respect, like Emily and Benny, to say you can.”
Kyle Buchanan is a pop culture reporter and also serves as The Projectionist, the awards season columnist for The Times.
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