The Smashing Machine might be an actual smashing machine myself, receiving a 15-minute standing ovation following its debut at this year’s Venice Film Festival. And as it stands, the movie is one of the most championed coming out of the fest, potentially setting itself up for a serious awards run.
Check out some of the first reactions to The Smashing Machine below:
While Dwayne Johnson is earning the sort of acclaim that could easily find him earning a Best Actor Oscar nomination — hey, this guy has come a long way since presenting the Best Visual Effects Oscar in 2008! — it’s really great to see Emily Blunt getting her fair share for playing Dawn Staples, the onetime wife of UFC fighter Mark Kerr. If things continue to track in this direction, Blunt could be looking at her second Oscar nod, following her first for 2023’s Oppenheimer. On seeking to break from the mold, Johnson recently told Variety, “I looked around a few years ago and I started to think, you know, am I living my dream or am I living other people’s dreams? You come to that recognition and I think you can either fall in line — ‘Well, it’s status quo, things are good, I don’t want to rock the boat’ — or go, I want to live my dreams now and do what I wanna do and tap into the stuff that I want to tap into, and have a place finally to put all this stuff that I’ve experienced in the past that I’ve shied away from. I’ve been scared to go deep and intense and raw until now, until I had this opportunity.”
Footage from the film’s staggering standing O shows that it quite easily brought both Johnson and director Benny Safdie — who marks his solo directorial feature here — to overwhelming tears. As of publication, The Smashing Machine holds an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 18 reviews.
The Smashing Machine is in the main competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, going up against 20 other films vying for the Golden Lion. We won’t know who will take home the honor until the fest closes on September 6th. The movie itself opens on October 3rd.
Are you going to be checking out The Smashing Machine in theaters?
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