Wendy Ide’s pick of other films: The Smashing Machine, Urchin and more

The Smashing Machine

(123 mins, 15) Directed by Benny Safdie; starring Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader

With his pile-driver fists, towering physique and breeze-block-shaped head, Dwayne Johnson is not the kind of actor who usually disappears into a role. On the contrary, until now the wrestling superstar turned Hollywood phenomenon rarely ventured far from his own affable meatball persona. Whatever the role, he was always first and foremost the Rock.

But in Benny Safdie’s first film as a solo director (he and his collaborator brother, Josh, parted ways after Uncut Gems), Johnson strips away the glossy veneer and delivers an unexpectedly bruised and naked performance as real-life mixed martial arts fighter Mark Kerr. The Smashing Machine, inspired by a 2002 documentary of the same title, explores the rise and opioid-addled fall of this pioneering figure in the then nascent sport. As Kerr, Johnson balances a savage, ultra-competitive alpha drive against an almost childlike earnestness. He’s scrupulously polite, diffusing the threat of his immense bulk by being kind to kids and charmingly courteous to little old ladies. But Kerr, it becomes clear, has issues.

His relationship with demanding girlfriend Dawn (a terrific, brassy Emily Blunt) is stormily combative; his relationship with his own battered body is even more destructive, as his dependency on prescription painkillers takes hold. Confronted by his best friend, Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader), about his addiction, Kerr breaks down and weeps, his face covered by huge meaty paws clenched around a hospital blanket. It’s new territory for Johnson, and he’s rather good.

Urchin

(99 mins, 15) Directed by Harris Dickinson; starring Frank Dillane, Harris Dickinson, Megan Northam

The lyrical directorial debut of the actor Harris Dickinson, Urchin finds diamonds in the gutter in this story of a rough-sleeping addict attempting to turn his life around. Frank Dillane is tremendous as Mike, a threadbare wraith haunting the streets of London’s Hackney when we first meet him. A stint in prison after an opportunistic but inept crime forces Mike to get clean, and allows us to see behind the mask of his addiction. He’s an endearing character – chaotic, certainly, and self-destructive, but also a dreamer, given to bursts of joy and enthusiasm. It’s as though someone took David Thewlis’s character in Naked and stripped away all the spikes and bile to reveal the mercurial charm underneath.

Dickinson’s approach is teasingly elusive; we get hints about Mike’s background and a strained relationship with his adoptive parents, but mostly the film, like the character, exists entirely in the present. Elsewhere, the director uses poetic imagery, including a recurring shot of a dreamlike, mossy cave. There’s a beauty to the image but, like addiction, it’s the kind of pit that is almost impossible to escape.

The Shadow’s Edge

(142 mins, 15) Directed by Larry Yang; starring Jackie Chan, Zifeng Zhang, Tony Leung Ka-fai

Jackie Chan is 71 years old. On the strength of the dizzyingly entertaining, Macau-set cops-v-gangsters action picture The Shadow’s Edge, not only has the martial arts legend still got it; he’s delivering some of his most thrillingly kinetic and ambitious work in years.

Chan plays Wong, a veteran police tracker who’s brought out of retirement when a gang of computer-savvy criminals devise a way to exploit the weaknesses of the AI surveillance system the cops rely upon. Using a combination of hacking, acrobatic building plummets and quick-change disguises, the gang gets away with a fortune in cryptocurrency. But for all the hi-tech razzle-dazzle, the brain behind the operation is decidedly old-school. Hong Kong cinema superstar Tony Leung Ka-fai plays the Shadow, a stab-happy mastermind who has evaded capture for decades. A lip-smacking treat for martial arts fans.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight

(99 mins, 15) Directed by Embeth Davidtz; starring Lexi Venter, Embeth Davidtz, Zikhona Bali

Actor Embeth Davidtz impresses with her directorial debut, an earthy adaptation of Alexandra Fuller’s autobiographical novel about her childhood in the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, during the bush war. It is told almost entirely through the eyes of eight-year-old Bobo, played by Lexi Venter. It’s quite a gamble to rest an entire film on the performance of one so young, but Venter is remarkable and entirely natural: a captivating, curious presence and our guide in this uncertain world.

The picture shares a kinship with Robin Campillo’s Red Island: both give a child’s perspective on the grubby, ugly tail-end of colonial occupation; both feature kids failed by the adults in their lives. In Bobo’s case, her mother (Davidtz) has retreated into alcoholism, punctuated by periods of mania, after the death of Bobo’s younger sister. Feral, bedraggled Bobo, surrounded by firearms and animals and taught to prize both highly, has absorbed some of her parents’ ingrained prejudices. But she also learns valuable lessons from Sarah (Zikhona Bali), the family’s maid.

Him

(96 mins, 18) Directed by Justin Tipping; starring Marlon Wayans, Tyriq Withers, Julia Fox 

A horror film that taps into body image, the pressure to achieve unrealistic physical perfection and the competition between the older and newer generations; yes, there’s a fair amount of thematic overlap between Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance and the schlocky sports horror Him. But this stylishly grisly story of Cam (Tyriq Withers), a rising American football player who is invited to train at the bootcamp/cult headquarters of the current “greatest of all time” Isaiah (Marlon Wayans), is too reliant on body horror shocks and a little thin on substantial ideas. Directed with the hollow showiness of an advert for trainers, this is a film that, despite the macho toxicity, only comes alive when Julia Fox’s malevolent trophy wife is on screen.