The Smashing Machine 4K - When Strength Isn't Enough
Dwayne Johnson as never seen before, in a high-quality UHD edition
After the creative separation from his brother Josh, Benny Safdie chooses an unexpected trajectory and brings the story of Mark Kerr to the screen with Dwayne Johnson at its center. The Smashing Machine, however, avoids the typical shortcuts of the sports biopic: no glorification, little rhetoric, and a narrative that moves by subtraction.
The film focuses more on the cracks than on the triumphs. Addiction, unstable relationships, and decline are not amplified for easy emotional impact, but treated with an almost modest distance. Even the fights forgo spectacular emphasis, favoring a concrete, almost uncomfortable physicality that conveys the real weight of bodies and choices.
The Anti-Epic of an Imperfect Champion
The aesthetic deliberately recalls the 90s, with gritty images and a visual style that accentuates the sense of marginality. It is here that Safdie finds coherence with his cinema: in the attention to the defeated, to men off-kilter. In this sense, Dwayne Johnson surprises with his commitment and control, but remains in an intermediate zone: credible, though never truly overwhelming. Equally, the film strikes but without delivering the decisive blow. What emerges is a sincere but restrained work, more interested in survival than redemption. A story about failing without completely losing oneself, which leaves a subtle but persistent emotional trace. Here is Elisa Giudici's artistic review.
The hardware rig for filming was varied, from a Betacam SP camera (Ikegami HL59) at standard video resolution for the fights, to 16 mm film (Arriflex 416 negative 200, 250, and 500 ASA) and 65 mm footage (IMAX MSM 9802 horizontal scrolling, 500 ASA). Native 4K master, image format 1.78:1 almost similar to the 1.85:1 material (3840 x 2160/24p), HEVC encoding on a dual-layer BD-66. Analog sources were used to achieve a native 4K master, with a raw and textured visual frame; even the grain alternates moments of greater thickness for relatively incisive detail, especially in medium and wide shots, improving in more static moments. Vivid and relatively bright colors, for a Dolby Vision spectacle that deserves native 10-bit screens, with moments of deep blacks.
DTS-HD MA 5.1 Italian and English (always 24 bit) with remarkable rendition, delivering an immersive soundtrack, with directional elements, galvanizing the clashes in the ring and surrounding with the shouts of spectators. Dynamic and scenic presence also for the dialogue, as well as for the rest of the soundtrack with echoes and elements from the rear channels even in sequences during training and transitions on the street and in small and medium-sized venues. The spectacle truly comes alive only when listening through a real HT system with separate channels.
The Smashing Machine - 4K Amaray Edition Eagle Pictures
As extras on the BD-50 with the 2K version, 2 deleted scenes from the final cut are included. Subtitles in Italian.
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