In Uncut Gems, we saw how Howard Ratner’s reckless bravado masked a gaping void threatening to swallow him whole. “I was really obsessed with radical empathy,” Safdie tells Empire of a film looking to not just follow Kerr into the ring, but also into his head. “I wanted to make a really honest movie about what it means to compete and to feel that. And, as Safdie saw in documentary The Smashing Machine: The Life And Times Of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr, the MMA star isn’t what you’d expect from a physical brawler. “In [The Smashing Machine] there is a sense of pressure.