Inner turmoil is something of a Safdie Brothers specialty. In Good Time , they depicted a brotherly relationship bubbling over with anxiety, protectiveness, emotional vulnerability. In Uncut Gems , we saw how Howard Ratner’s reckless bravado masked a gaping void threatening to swallow him whole. And so, while The Smashing Machine is a solo Benny Safdie venture (his brother Josh is behind the upcoming Marty Supreme ), there’s still that same DNA there – his UFC movie, about the life of Mark Kerr (played here by Dwayne Johnson), is its own exploration of a disparity between a surface appearance and what’s happening beneath.

“I was really obsessed with radical empathy,” Safdie tells Empire of a film looking to not just follow Kerr into the ring, but also into his head. “I w

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