Last night, I went on a date night with my beloved and thought to go watch Dwayne Johnson's latest movie called "Smashing Machine". It's based on a true story of Mark Kerr who was one of the first USA fighters to make it big in MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) in Japan back in the 1980 - 2000.
My beloved bought some pizza (a first for me in the movie theatres) and a large fizzy which I knew I wouldn't be able to finish and then we settled into our recliner chairs cinematic viewing. Right from the outset there are a lot of fight scenes and although I've watched a lot of male macho movies with fight scenes, this looked particularly graphic.
Perhaps it was because in the early days of MMA they were still working out the rules and eye gouging, knees to the head and other moves that were banned in other sports. I particularly didn't like the loud background songs and some of the background music in scenes were so jarring.
Apart from that, I thought Dwayne Johnson's acting was superb, except I couldn't get over the way that they did his makeup prosthetics around his eye area, it just didn't seem right. He showed a lot of vulnerability with crying scenes (oops - belated spoiler alert) and I couldn't help but feel sorry for him with his self-absorbed girlfriend.
At the end of the movie, the actual real-life Mark Kerr has his cameo scene buying his groceries at a shopping place and then leaves in his large twin cab truck. He never recovered from some of his injuries and pain killers was a very real part of his life with addiction.
We came out of that movie feeling a little lack-luster in that the movie in a sense was a tribute to him for how he started in the sport but then through all of the dramas he was going through he wasn't able to reach that pinnacle again - although one of his good friends did.
I think it's more of a man's movie and that's why I took my beloved with me as sometimes the graphic violence seemed real but too much for my taste. Over all, it's in the middle ground for me and Emily Blunt's acting as the girlfriend was pretty good too. Just not a movie for me...
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