Dwayne Johnson is a good actor and always has been. Underestimated by his wrestling background and a large filmography mostly of duds, Johnson’s respect as a performer has had its peaks and valleys, but recently has settled below the favoritism of other wrestlers-turned-actors Dave Bautista and John Cena. Johnson’s gift was being able to draw you in with his charismatic voice and sense of non-stop workman energy which is a skill honed and perfected in the ring and responsible for his movie star status in the first place. But much like actors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jason Statham, he remained in a box of action stars that may never act out of their comfort zone or be taken seriously enough to do so. But Johnson has finally found a light in the blockbuster tunnel that very few of his muscle-bodied peers find, the chance for prestige recognition in the form of an A24 biopic.

Portraying Mark Kerr, a former wrestler-turned-MMA fighter, Johnson feels fully in his element, in a film directly based on the 2002 HBO documentary of Kerr’s career The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr. Taking place between 1997 and 2000, the film chronicles Kerr at his peak, preparing to enter the Pride Fighting Championships in Japan alongside fellow fighter Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader, a surprisingly natural performance and comforting presence), while being mentored through a rigorous training process by Bas Rutten (playing himself). His girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt) does everything she can to service and support him, but Kerr’s focus on his training has completely sidelined his interest in a relationship. In her introductory scene, she offers him a smoothie she’s just made and he tosses it out because it contains the wrong milk. While humiliated, she is drawn back to his kind voice as he comforts her on the couch, “it’s okay, you didn’t know.” But his back-and-forth intimacy is the least of their problems: Mark Kerr is a drug addict.

After years of beats and bruises, the brutality shown incredibly well by director Benny Safdie (in the director’s chair solo for the first time while brother Josh is off making another A24 sports biopic Marty Supreme), Kerr has become addicted and reliant on painkillers, often going into his bathroom to inject needles into his arms. Dawn gets after him for it, but there is no getting through to him until finally a major event forces Kerr to become sober. Dawn becomes irritable, spiraling in her own substance abuse and mental health and becoming a nuisance on Kerr. This is where The Smashing Machine hits turbulence.

Poor Emily Blunt acting for her life, saddled with a character that couldn’t be less defined. Dawn tells Kerr in the movie during an argument “you don’t know anything about me!” and it’s true, we don’t. Dawn is a character deployed to only over show Mark’s faults as a romantic partner or to be the problem in his life. Perhaps it’s meant to be an unflattering role, but it only causes you to question “why are these two together?” and why don’t we see what draws them to each other? Dawn’s descent into her own instability, provoked by Mark’s abusive nature, is clumsily depicted, missing key pieces as though Safdie intentionally plucked them out to get us more on Kerr’s side of the argument.

Johnson’s performance has large surges of electricity both in and out of the ring, and is able to nail down Kerr’s odd behavior to a tee. He will be in a screaming match with Dawn, Johnson fully meeting Blunt at her level, and in harnessing his rage will set down his dinner plate on the counter before sending his giant fist through their living room door and destroying it to bits. His mannerisms are his need to have manners through everything. He says “please and thank you”, he talks to strangers, he offers compliments. Kerr is a man who forces himself to be a nice guy, unaware that he is not. It’s a complex role, though the screenplay with its many problems, skips over crucial moments. Kerr’s addictive period affected every day of his life for years and the moment he decides to become sober, the film just decides that he is, which reads oddly false.

It’s tough to not make this entire review about Johnson, but it’s hard not to when he is in nearly every scene. Safdie employs a visual approach inspired by the documentary it was based on, where the camera is constantly in his face or over his shoulder or following him from room to room. There sometimes does feel like there is a person on the opposite side of the camera in many scenes. But the closer the camera is to Johnson, the less he disappears into the role. There is even a moment in the third act where he shaves his head and Johnson just isn’t able to escape his own persona anymore despite the incredible makeup prosthetics work by the legendary Kazu Hiro.

Johnson is immersed into the character 100 percent of the film, but maybe he is unaware of still how big his own image is. When the film inevitably cuts to real-life footage of Mark Kerr, the spell is entirely broken. While it is meant to show “oh, look, he acted just like this!”, and that trick will likely work on most audiences, but it immediately begged the question: “wait, how old is Mark Kerr today?” Mark Kerr is 56, just a few years older than Johnson is now, who is portraying him 25 years younger. Now, the movie likely would never get made without Johnson, but as well cast as he is in the type of part being played, it’s the one big stumble of authenticity that the movie makes for a film hellbent on being authentic to true-life. Kerr reads much older in the film, and perhaps he did in real-life. It probably helps the film that Bas Rutten is playing himself 25 years in the past to make him more compatible to Johnson’s casting. It’s a flaw of the film, but one that can be entirely ignorable if the film was better.

What can’t be ignorable is Safdie’s disorderly script and editing choices. While successful in depicting the intense art of MMA, clearly aided by the guidance of people involved in front of the camera, the film is also one big two-hour headache. Safdie overloads the music cues and adds an abrasive score by Nala Sinephro, which intentionally clangs and crashes with every hit. Scenes have no smooth transitions, skipping over key storytelling. Yes, it does purposefully avoid traditional sports biopic conventions, but it avoids them to a fault, leaving the film feeling like an empty experience. Audiences will leave the film talking about Dwayne Johnson, Mark Kerr will be an afterthought.