The Iron Claw is a 2023 biographical sports-drama following the famous family of the Von Erichs through triumph and tragedy.
If there were a Mount Rushmore of wrestling families, the Von Erichs would surely be a part of it. Pivoting from a football career to the life of a wrestler, Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany) finds achievement within the squared circle, yet reaching the top of the mountain—securing the world heavyweight championship—proves to be elusive. He so desperately wants to give his wife, Doris (Maura Tierney) and sons a great life that the top of the mountain would secure.
As Fritz phased out of in-ring competition and into full-time lead promoter of World Class Championship Wrestling, he made sure to push—no demand—his four sons to reach athletic greatness. There’s Kevin (Zac Efron) functionally the oldest and quickly making a wrestling name for himself in the late 70s, second-oldest David (Harris Dickinson), rapidly preparing to make his in-ring debut, third-oldest oldest Kerry (Jeremy Allen White), a future Olympian, and youngest Mike (Stanley Simons), wanting nothing to do with the ring and instead be a musician, to the behest of Fritz. Friendly competition stemming from their father drives the older three, but all four are tied together by unbreakable bonds. As successes are attained in the Von Erich family, sadly so too is tragedy after tragedy.
It’s always a welcome, surprising delight when a movie comes out of relative nowhere and becomes a rousing critical and audience success. Even more surprising (and welcomed, to this semi-lapsed wrestling fan who no longer watches with the immediate intent he once did though still keeps abreast on many industry happenings through podcasts) when the movie’s subject is a famed wrestling family but told with none of the schlock or super insider-ness that can be off-putting to many. The Iron Claw is a deeply moving, somber, and somehow uplifting feature that needs to be talked about more.
The Iron Claw marks writer/director Sean Durkin’s third feature, this time under the distribution of mighty industry indie-focused A24. At its best, professional wrestling entertainment is a perfect marriage of athletic prowess, choreographed mayhem, and bombastic showmanship. With heavy assists from editor Matthew Hannam and composer Richard Reed Parry, Durkin’s in-ring scenes capture all of the aforementioned, wrapped in a time where wrestling was starting to explode beyond its territorial set-up. But Durkin’s film is not solely a wrestling film; it’s merely the backdrop for the gripping family turbulence. The director makes wise choices by rarely showcasing the harrowing machinations of a tragedy, but building up to them and letting us linger with the characters as they process the aftermath. Powerful stuff.
For hardcore fanatics, there are cool nods to the inner biz of wrestling and it’s quite clear that the right care was taken to make this feel as much as 70’s-80’s territorial wrestling as possible from sound, lighting, staging, and the like. But even better, The Iron Claw isn’t interested in alienating viewers who have never seen a second of professional wrestling or aren’t interested in doing so. The concepts a viewer would need to know to understand success like “heat,” how championships work/what they represent, and how matches are performed are discussed in a fluid and completely 101-level style manner.
There’s a lot that could have gone wrong with the movie, whether it be all of its characters in what turns out to be a very quick-moving runtime of two hours and eleven minutes, a focus on rival promotion companies, or heavier attention to the in-ring side of things. Thankfully, Durkin focuses his script on the Von Erich family, particularly the quartet of brothers and their relationships to each other, collectively, and to their domineering patriarch, Fritz. The first 40 minutes are solely dedicated to this, and by the time the kicks to the guts come, we know these characters and what drives them.
However, it’s hard not to feel like a sizable part of the story should be here in the missing brother that is Chris Von Erich, but perhaps Durkin is correct in sensing that his inclusion would push the sadness too far in tandem with a longer runtime. As the bad stuff starts happening, sporadic stretches exist in which The Iron Claw moves too hastily; at one point, we see that Kevin has moved out of full-time wrestling and into management, yet the feature cuts to the eldest brother analyzing funds and talking to other promoters with no build. All that said, this ends with quite the unexpected high-impact finisher; I’m hard pressed to find any 2023 film that ends as beautifully and as complete as this.
Hard pressed too to come up with any prior Efron performance to top his turn as Kevin Von Erich here. The physical transformation is only one part of it, but seeing Efron disappear in the role and be the fulcrum for every emotional beat in the movie—he plays off of everyone, isn’t easy to pull off as smoothly as he does. It is a collectively strong ensemble effort, from the charisma character magnets of White and Dickinson, to the black-sheeped shyness of Simons, the taciturn approach of Tierney, and the doggedly myopic, world-weary, and ultra-competitive McCallany as the head of the household Fritz.
Similar to a wrestler who comes out of nowhere and immediately establishes themselves as a force worthy of a push up the card, The Iron Claw comes in at the end of the year to position itself as a rightful awards contender going into 2024.