Oh, this is mildly embarrassing. I have a three day weekend, and so, there’s no reason not to see something new at the multiplex every day. For Sunday, I opted to check out The Iron Claw, a based-on-a-true-story sports biopic about the Von Erich family, pro-wrestlers with a life full of tragedy. I’d heard good things about it, and it looked like it wasn’t going to be at the local AMC much longer. Then I lost track of time and left my apartment a little late. Consequently, I missed the first few minutes. That, pretty much, never happens.
Oh, I saw enough to allow me to make an informed judgement on the movie, but I did miss some of it. I just figure it’s only fair to say so.
Kevin Von Erich (Zac Efron) is an up-and-coming pro-wrestler in a small pro-league owned by his father Fritz (Holt McCallany). Fritz himself is a former wrestler who never reached the level of world champion, and he’s pushing for that to be something of a family thing as Kevin’s younger brother David (Harris Dickinson) has just joined Kevin in the ring while aspiring Olympian brother Kerry (Jeremy Allen White) soon follows after the American boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Fourth brother Mike (Stanley Simons) doesn’t appear to have his brothers’ athletic prowess, but he does possess musical ambition that his father doesn’t encourage despite the fact the brothers’ mother (Maura Tierney) explains that her husband was once a very talented musician himself. For Fritz, the only thing that matters is winning the belt and bringing it home.
It’s not exactly a surprise that Fritz speaks of winning the belt as something of a family goal whether his family wants it or not. However, as Kevin explains to his girlfriend/eventual wife Pam (Lily James), Kevin does love wrestling, but for him, it’s less about winning the championship and more just bonding with his brothers (including Mike). Indeed, at the beginning of the movie, when Kevin, David, and Kerry are all wrestling and training together, with Mike occasionally offering something of his own, everyone seems to be at their happiest. But Kevin also told Pam on their first date about something he called “the curse of the Von Erichs” since that wasn’t actually the family name. Kevin laughs it off at first, but as tragedy stalks the family, he begins to wonder if there’s something to it. Meanwhile, Fritz’s response to every incident is to buckle down and work harder to win that championship belt. Can Kevin find some level of family happiness for himself amidst all this tragedy?
I should start off by saying I am not a wrestling fan. To each their own, but it doesn’t do much for me. That said, I can appreciate that wrestling is maybe more of the background incident here. Theoretically, Fritz could be pushing his sons into any sport. It just happens to be wrestling. At the same time, I can really appreciate the athleticism on display here, including what I am guessing were at least some stunts done by members of the cast. Likewise, when Pam outright asks if wrestling is fake, Kevin gives a short explanation of how things work that explained to me far better why something with fixed outcomes needs something like audience approval for a wrestler much better than the WWE-produced Fighting with My Family did over its entire runtime back in 2019. Likewise, a lesser movie might have shown a big, dramatic showdown between Tierney’s Doris and McCallany’s Fritz after everything that happened to their sons, but instead, the scene is a quiet one without shouting and just Doris doing her own thing for the first time in years. Likewise, writer/director Sean Durkin actually left out the youngest Von Erick brother from the movie since his own tragic end might have seemed to be too much for one movie no matter how true it was.
It helps that the movie is anchored by a solid performance by Efron. Bulked up to the point where, with his 80s wrestler haircut, he could have doubled for a live action He-Man, he plays Kevin as a quiet man of few words, but when he does speak, he usually has something worth saying come out of his mouth. He’s a man whose professional career never quite reached the levels of brothers David and Kerry, but who was happiest just being with his family. Kevin takes it the hardest as the tragedies hit even if he is always the one to get through physically unscathed. Despite the generally laconic nature of the character, Efron’s final scene includes a line that is, as delivered, both heartbreaking and the best way to sum up his entire character arc. The movie doesn’t condemn wrestling (the real Kevin has two adult sons who alsongot into the sport), but what it does instead is show how far a strong family bond can take people, and how much it hurts when that bond starts to break.
Grade: A
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