Benny Safdie’s “The Smashing Machine” isn’t what you assume it’s, particularly should you assume it’s a film a couple of British man who thinks his typewriter is the tops.

“The Smashing Machine” would appear to bear all of the hallmarks of one thing grittier, darker and extra disturbing than it’s. It’s the solo directorial debut of the youthful Safdie, whose movies together with his brother, Josh, have not often not sprinted headlong into unsettling tumult. Add that sensibility to a true-life story of a combined martial arts fighter within the late ’90s, and it’s solely pure to spend a lot of “The Smashing Machine” bracing for tragedy, for some ear-splitting descent into macho calamity.

But “The Smashing Machine,” starring Dwayne Johnson as MMA pioneer Mark Kerr, is one thing easier and fewer curious. A scarcity of probing was by no means something you can accuse a Safdie brothers’ film of; these are the filmmakers who plunged a digicam into the physique cavity of a jewelry-store proprietor in “Uncut Gems.” However, regardless of its grainy, VHS aesthetics, “The Smashing Machine” is a surprisingly typical and oddly untroubled film, albeit one that offers Johnson an indie-film platform for certainly one of his best performances.

As Mark, Johnson has drained away a lot of his big-screen charisma. The half — brawny, typically shirtless, steadily raging within the ring — is instantly so near Johnson’s personal skilled wrestling background that early scenes look virtually documentary-like. However gone is the megawatt grin and the dashing eyebrow raise. Johnson’s usually polished bald head is right here coated with a intently cropped darkish head of hair.

Within the film’s opening, Mark rhapsodizes about his feeling of domination. An opponent’s worry, he says, you’ll be able to “odor of their scent.” At this level, Mark has identified solely victory in thumping triumphs that go away him feeling like a god. Dropping, he confesses, is unfathomable.

The legal guidelines of moviedom decree, after all, that Mark will quickly lose, and his well-earned sense of invincibility will shatter. “The Smashing Machine” bounces between Mark’s residence and Japan, the place the Delight Combating Championship takes place. That’s the place Mark, a much-celebrated champion, is taken down by an unlawful however however humbling transfer. After the very fact, the match is dominated a tie, however the stink of defeat by no means dissipates.

The actual battle, in any case, is at residence. Mark’s dependence on opioids for the punishing extremes he endures is changing into determined. “The Smashing Machine” is predicated on John Hyams’s 2002 documentary of the identical identify, and a part of the character of that movie was the curiosity of Mark’s excessive violence within the ring and his in any other case candy passivity. In Safdie’s movie, Mark is requested within the physician’s ready room if fighters hate one another throughout a bout. “Completely not,” he replies.

However whereas we don’t doubt Mark’s sincerity — he’s as earnest as he’s muscle-bound — Johnson additionally exudes an inside turmoil, and a battle to maintain his rage at bay whereas nursing mounting wounds to his ego. His physique is so stiff, it’s like he may snap at any second.

That’s the case for Mark, most of all, round his spouse, Daybreak Staples (Emily Blunt), a former Playboy mannequin who’s proven as alternatively supportive and insensitive to Mark’s scenario. They feud typically, generally instantly earlier than a match, generally over how one can make his shakes. When he tries to surrender opioids, he takes her late-night ingesting as a provocation. “Deal with me like a person,” he tells her.

It’s an ungainly, maybe judgmental characterization that may be all of the extra evident if it weren’t for Blunt’s tact as a performer. But it surely throws “The Smashing Machine” off target, particularly when the film appears to wish to lean extra on its different central relationship: that of Mark and his good friend, coach and generally competitor Mark Coleman (performed by former Bellator champion Ryan Bader).

In his movies together with his brother, Safdie has lengthy introduced real-life figures into their film worlds, blurring fictional boundaries. Bader offers “The Smashing Machine” a dose of documentary in his presence, however I’d argue that Johnson’s proximity to this world offers the film its most compelling real-life echoes.

I occur to assume Johnson can also be superb in full movie-star mode, particularly when he has the possibility to wryly undercut his big-screen presence in comedies like “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” or “The Tooth Fairy.” But it surely’s additionally charming to see him so totally settled into a personality like he’s in “The Smashing Machine” whereas completely shorn of his charisma.

But the efficiency of that efficiency is let down by a film that fails to essentially grapple with the violent world round Mark, resorting as a substitute for a blander appreciation of those MMA combatants. What does resonate, although, is the portrait of a human colossus who learns to simply accept defeat — a mountain of a person who seems to be like he may, with out barely making an attempt, rip somebody’s head off at any second. As an alternative he takes a deep breath, and doesn’t.

“The Smashing Machine,” an A24 launch, is rated R by the Movement Image Affiliation for language and a few drug abuse. Operating time: 123 minutes. Two and a half stars out of 4.