A good movie

The main reason I wanted to watch this flick was because I enjoyed a lot the Safdie Brothers’ work, especially ‘Good Time’. As a result, I was quite eager to check this flick since it was Benny Safdie’s first solo directorial effort. Unfortunately, even if it was fairly well received, as far as I was concerned, it was a decent watch but not really much more than that. Basically, it was a solid but also really generic biopic. Of course, the fact that I don’t care about UFC (at the end of the day, it’s about two grown-ups beating the sh*t out of each other, even more than in boxing) probably didn’t help. I might be dumb but, even on the poster, they gave us the tagline ‘The unforgettable true story of a UFC legend’ but the guy was actually only once in the octagon and, instead, we saw him mostly fighting not for UFC but for Pride, another prominent MMA player at the time. Concerning the story, it was also not really strong narratively speaking. I mean, it was some pretty basic stuff, you had three storylines, Kerr struggled with his career, Kerr struggled with some drug addiction and Kerr struggled with his relationship with his girlfriend but, to be honest, none of it really dazzled me. Regarding his career, they kept telling us that he was this incredible champion but he never did anything really impressive in this area during the whole duration. Hell, for his come-back tournament, he actually lost early on. Concerning the drug addiction, you don’t really get an introduction on how it all started, instead, you get to see Keer getting in rehab and, five mins later, you get to see him getting out of rehab, that’s how deep they went on this subject. Concerning his relationship with Dawn, you get to see them having a few arguments but it never went further than that. So, all in all, sure, it was well made but it still felt rather half-baked though. However, what saved this movie was Dwayne Johnson though. Indeed, the guy got some praise for his work here and it was totally deserved. Obviously, I didn’t even know Mark Kerr before watching this movie but I do know that Johnson completely disappeared in this character and he gave us here such a complex and rather spellbinding performance. Anyway, to conclude, even if this movie didn’t really impress me, thanks to a career-best performance by Dwayne Johnson, I still think the damned thing is worth a look. 

7/10