Benny Safdie’s unconventional biopic The Smashing Machine can’t choose which punch to land
Safdie treats Kerr’s journey like a kid at an all-you-can-eat buffet—putting bits of everything onto the plate—too enamored with each individual element to consider taking some stuff off.
Benny Safdie was never going to make a conventional sports biopic. If you’re familiar with his work with his brother Josh — or at the very least, if you’ve seen Uncut Gems — you know his work is observational, scrappy and grimy. The Safdies’ films together owe more to the raw, performance-centric work of filmmakers like John Cassavetes and the…
