After he overdoses, his friend and fellow fighter Mark Coleman (UFC fighter Ryan Bader) comes to see him in the hospital, but he can’t even admit that he collapsed, only recollecting that suddenly he was “on the floor.” Once he’s out of rehab, he goes with Dawn to an amusement park, where a worker makes the mistake of suggesting that he “can’t” go on a Rotor ride that is likely to make him nauseous. As he explains before opting for the merry-go-round: “It’s not that I can’t handle it, I am choosing not to go on the ride!” The Smashing Machine is pitched in a lower key than Good Time (2017) and Uncut Gems (2019)—as the film meandered, I missed some of the Safdie duo’s electric momentum and tight plotting—but its unflashy naturalism is its calling card, which may be why the nonprofessional actor, Bader, is the standout performer among movie stars. Despite a peppering of archival news footage of car bombings and the Maidan Uprising, Wizard of the Kremlin stands at a remove from the regime’s atrocities; the film’s project, like any Assayas movie, is cerebral, invested in the mechanisms of power, self-delusion, and vanity.
Published at: 2025-09-16 21:59:55
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