The Iron Claw
In cinemas now
Viewers that are unfamiliar with the tragic life and times of the Von Erich family will get more than they bargained for from Sean Durkin’s weighty The Iron Claw, which uses the excessively virile world of professional wrestling as a proxy through which to examine the repercussions of unregulated toxic masculinity.
The film is centred on the aforementioned dynasty of brawlers, which was ruled malignantly by its patriarch Fritz (Holt McCallany), who grooms his children for combat in the hope that they will bring home the championship title that evaded him throughout his career. Of that offspring, Kevin (Zac Efron) seems primed for the spotlight, but is soon overlooked in favour of his more self-assured siblings David (Harris Dickinson) and Kerry (Jeremy Allen White). While navigating their quest for in-ring glory, the brothers must contend with their naysaying father’s constant talk of the family ‘curse’, which he uses as a means of explaining away his own shortcomings as a performer and parent.
However, the improbably sad events of The Iron Claw soon has you wondering whether that jinx might be real, as catastrophe constantly befalls the Von Erich’s in a manner that is almost too sad to comprehend. In that sense, the crowning achievement of Durkin’s film might be the way in which it carries that heft within the confines of a family that are almost emotionally repressed beyond repair. Of the film’s stellar cast, it is a career-best Efron that best conveys this inhibition, with his gargantuan frame serving as a mere smokescreen for the deep-seated trauma he is forced to carry.
In addition to being a supremely acted affair, The Iron Claw is also impressive from a visual perspective, thanks to the cinematography of Mátyás Erdély (Son of Saul) and its convincing wrestling sequences, which were coordinated by a former professional, Chavo Guerrero, and saw the cast perform full-length matches in front of a live audience. While not quite hitting the heights of Darren Aronofsky’s sublime The Wrestler, those fight sequences certainly rank highly in the admittedly shallow annals of wrestling pictures.
Above all else though, and despite its niche setting, this is a universal reminder of the potentially fatal pitfalls of neglecting one’s emotions and the importance of breaking free of the burdens of others expectations, despite how difficult that might be.
