The Iron Claw – Dir: Sean Durkin (Film Review)

In an era of middling biopics (Napoleon, Maestro, Air), The Iron Claw is a suplex right to the heart. Zac Efron astonishes in an emotional wrestling melodrama.

Starring: Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, Maura Tierney

Director Sean Durkin‘s previous outing, the masterful 2020 psychological drama The Nest, also examines a family on the verge of collapse. This time, Durkin has traded the frigid opulence of empty manor houses for the wrestling ring, a bloodied canvas of spiritual desolation and broken men.

The Von Erich family are cursed. Or at least they think so. The family patriarch, Fritz Von Erich, was a wrestler. His sons must follow in his footsteps to fight for what ‘belongs’ to them: the NWA World Heavyweight Championship.

Fritz Von Erich projects his emotional impotence onto his sons, who must be bigger and stronger than anyone else. The rankings of his favourite sons are asserted around the breakfast table, but don’t worry; they can change, he says. For these rankings to change, a son has to become more or less useful to the patriarch and his virulent desire for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship.

Zac Efron plays Kevin Von Erich, a wrestler on the cusp of greatness, or at least conditioned to think he is. He’s the oldest brother—well, he’s not the oldest, but Jack Jr. died as a child in an accident. Kevin is now the one looking out for Mike, Kerry and David. Oddly, Chris Von Erich, the smallest and youngest of the Von Erich family who also suffered a tragic fate, is written out of The Iron Claw. Maybe it’s revisionism by Durkin, who also pens the script, but the tragedy of the Von Erichs and its heartwrenching happenings defy belief. It’s easy to understand why Durkin streamlined the story, but a quick Google search reveals that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The Iron Claw is aesthetically bold and grandiose, but its plot is told without risk. One thing happens, and then another thing happens. There’s a disconnect between how the story of the Von Erichs is being told and the sparkling excess of gold-plated championship belts and diamond encrusted capes. The surreal horror of this fable, as seen in one ethereal dream sequence, could have been heightened. Moreover, the third act unfurls at a breakneck speed. So when The Iron Claw reaches its devastating emotional climax, there’s little time to ponder the pain that came before.

Thankfully, these narrative decisions do not undermine the ensemble cast’s exquisite performances. Efron, the Highschool Musical starlet, heartthrob Jeremy Allen White, soon to be A-lister Harris Dickinson, and breakout star Stanley Simons are all terrific. As the four sons, they ground the film in an aching masculinity. Cinematographer Mátyás Erdély captures the wrestling ring as a spiritual plane in a celestial haze of sweat and blood. Here on this matted canvas that rages violently with the existential angst of what it means to be a man, the Von Erichs hope to prove themselves. With each moonsault, spinebuster and piledriver, they hope it will bring them closer to immortality and grant them the validation they crave from their father.

Simons, as Mike Von Erich, is the exception. Whilst his brothers are in the gym pumping iron, he’s in his room listening to Pink Floyd or tuning his guitar. Perhaps his story is the saddest. The life of matriarch Doris Von Erich is also heart-wrenching. Played by Maura Tierney, she is ringside to the horrors that beset her family. Unable to do anything but watch on, Doris is silent. Ultimately, it’s Efron as Kevin who is the film’s emotional core. Behind his steely eyes, chiseled jaw, and herculean body is a haunted infantile man. He waddles around in tighty-whiteys with a child’s haircut, obeying his father’s every order—”Yes sir.” Wrestling is ‘fake’, but Efron is not. He is transformative in a role that will devastate viewers like a flying elbow drop to the soul. It’s just a shame that, like Efron, The Iron Claw isn’t afraid to be a little more daring.

Thomas Giblin

The Iron Claw opens in cinemas today. Click here for tickets and show times.