In the opening minutes of "The Smashing Machine," UFC fighter Mark Kerr describes what it’s like to beat another man senseless in the ring. "You can feel almost instantly whether he’s gonna give in or not," Kerr says in a tone of almost childlike wonder.

"The Smashing Machine" isn’t really introducing us to Kerr, however, but to the actor who plays him, Dwayne Johnson.

Yes, we all know Johnson, himself a former wrestler, whose hulking physique and boyish smile turned him into a star of big-tent Hollywood entertainments like "The Scorpion King" and "Rampage." With "The Smashing Machine," Johnson appears to be going for Oscar gold, burying his bankable face under prosthetics to play a real-life figure — the same formula that Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron and Gary Oldman employed to g

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