The Smashing Machine (Safdie, 2025) starts in usual fashion for a sports biopic, you are placed into the world of the sportsman – in this case Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) – by seeing them at the top of their game and also in a distant world from today. This is where you find out you are watching a VHS, both reminiscing the past and also showing that the world in which this is set is closer in time to today than what has just been seen. The film sets itself in the late nineties yet you feel like the tape he is watching at the start is him watching his former self back today. The audience itself is placed in the same shoes as Kerr as we are both going on a journey to reminisce the past. Therefore it is all about memory and nostalgia, where emotion might sometimes overweigh truth.

This isn’t to say what is being shown isn’t true to life. Of course with any biopic there are many narrative jumps to create a compelling story, yet a lot that has come out since has said that the story is pretty close to the truth. But as already highlighted we are experiencing what is a piece of nostalgia from an individuals perspective. We follow Kerr’s story, even at moments when he isn’t competing in fights, it is still him that we follow and not other fighters. This to me is what makes a compelling biopic in the same way that any narrative film needs emotion at the heart of it. People come into and leave Kerr’s life but in the end it is down to his own drive and character to where his future lies. You feel that the film could situate itself in any few years of his life and it would still be the same. There would be highs and lows but at the end of it, when you are an individual aiming for individual superiority in a select field, it is hard for those around you to stick around in the narrative for too long.