Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson guns for Oscar in sleepy ‘Smashing Machine’

TORONTO — In a canyon-sized leap for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the man has gone from being a professional wrestler to playing an MMA fighter.

What a stretch! But I suppose the old chestnut “write what you know” can just as easily apply to actors. 

In Johnson’s case: “Fight what you know.”

His performance as two-time UFC heavyweight champion Mark Kerr in “The Smashing Machine,” which played Monday night at the Toronto International Film Festival, is his deepest, most nuanced and respectable work to date.

He’s dialed in, vulnerable, and not rattling off punchlines or hiding behind his badass exterior for once. Having been punched in the face by “Jungle Cruise,” “Red One,” and “Jumanji: The Next Level,” I didn’t think he had it in him. 

Well, now Johnson is already in the conversation for the Oscars, which — set your watches — are still six months away. 

What gets in the actor’s way is that his best turn so far comes in a low-key, snoozy movie in which not all that much happens. “The Smashing Machine,” which hits theaters Oct. 3, amounts to opponents circling each other in the ring aimlessly for more than two hours.

Making mixed martial arts — described in the film as “the bloodiest and the goriest sport you’ve ever seen” — tame and lackluster is a challenge. 

But director Benny Safdie is up to the task.

There is a sense that Safdie, who co-directed terrific films such as “Uncut Gems” with his brother Josh, wants to butt heads with common sports movie conventions in favor of a softer character study. Go for it, but not at the expense of an audience’s involvement.

For example, when Kerr is duking it out, jazz music plays — not “Gonna Fly Now” from “Rocky.” A man being kneed in the head is practically soothing, and the fights (30 seconds here, a minute there) are some of the dullest sections of the film. 

Even personal demons are restrained. After Kerr overdoses on narcotics, which we don’t see, he goes to rehab, which we also don’t see. 

He returns home clean and sober to Arizona and has repetitive arguments with his spunky, not-clean-and-sober girlfriend, Dawn, played by Johnson’s frequent co-star Emily Blunt. The pair’s chemistry is well-honed by now, and “Smashing Machine” shows a different, edgier side of both.

Too bad Dawn’s underdeveloped story is a side of peas.  

Who Johnson connects best with, though, is Ryan Bader as his friend Mark Coleman, a fellow MMA fighter. The concern and love in Bader’s eyes as he talks to Johnson’s hospitalized Kerr is documentary-real. Johnson lies there crying with a blanket over his head, and you can understand why.

Reality, to Safdie’s credit, is the director’s strongest suit here. The story takes place from 1997 to 2000, and there’s a harsh VHS aesthetic everywhere. The director and gifted editor made it look, well, not like a million bucks. That’s the point.

When Kerr flies coach to Tokyo, it’s to fight in unglamorous tournaments as far away from the MGM Grand as you can get. The green-hued locker room showers look like they belong in a meat processing plant.  

The very believable winding back of the clock to when MMA wasn’t nearly as huge as it is now allows Johnson, one of the world’s most famous men, to disappear enough that we mostly forget it’s The Rock up there.  

It’s hard to say if “Smashing Machine” will be a launching pad to more prestigious, artsy roles for the guy who got his Hollywood start in “The Mummy Returns.” Like Pamela Anderson’s lovely turn in “The Last Showgirl,” he’s plying his trade in a very familiar environment.

I doubt his next step is a biopic about Harry Truman.

Whatever happens, kudos to Johnson for finally chipping away at The Rock.