After a Career Year, 'The Smashing Machine's Benny Safdie Is Quietly Becoming the Most Surprising Standout of 2025

There’s a scene in Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine in which Dwayne Johnson’s Mark and Emily Blunt’s Dawn are having an intense argument inside their home. This is a film that already has an unsettling tension (well, it is a Benny Safdie film), and now, things look to explode. Amplifying all of this, the scene is set in real time to Bruce Springsteen’s epic “Jungleland,” which, you may or may not know, is a very long song. And Safdie uses the whole song. The result is something both chaotic and beautiful – and unlike anything you’ve probably seen before. And it’s a scene Benny Safdie has pretty obviously been wanting to make his entire career.