It’s not a revelation, exactly, but it’s on the way. To say otherwise would seem (to this critic, at least) coddling, as if one were patting that gargantuanly lumpish back for exhibiting a dram of genuine human emotion, and not just scowling into the horizon or bulldozing his way through an action set piece chock-full of Michael Bay-style pyrotechnics.

I’m, of course, referring to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s leading man performance in this year’s The Smashing Machine, a biopic based on the career of pioneering MMA fighter Mark Kerr (which director Benny Safdie adapted from John Hyams’s 2002 documentary The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr). There’s no doubt that this is a significant shift for Johnson, and it is not unwelcome for a major star like him to choose such a project (which he also produced) as his next vehicle; and my criticisms should not dissuade a viewer from acknowledging Johnson’s wisely understated approach to the role.

It is an approach, however, that would not rightly be characterized as singularly “transformative”—and not just due to the fact that the prosthetics do quite a bit of the heavy lifting when it comes to said transformation. Simply put, Johnson does not fully disappear into the role in a way that some of the accolades would suggest. Part of this is because of his own limited abilities as an actor, and another (perhaps one more to blame) is because of the limitations of his material, which is ultimately too by-the-numbers when it matters, i.e. when the opportunity to showcase real subtlety is most crucial. […]