The Iron Claw (Movie Review)

 

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The Iron Claw is the latest biographical sports drama, exploring the true and unexpectedly tragic story of the Von Erich family, the Texas family who was largely responsible for the massive surge in wrestling’s popularity in the late 1970s and 1980s. The film is directed by Sean Durkin and stars Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, Maura Tierney, Stanley Simons, Holt McCallany and Lily James. 

Wrestling is a sport not often explored in cinema, as the industry has often chosen to use boxing as a vehicle to explore warped perceptions of masculinity instead. There’s something more elegant and graceful to wrestling, rather than the strategic (and real) jabs and vicious competition in boxing. But, as with any great sports drama, this is a film that is about more than just wrestling, because what this finds within the ring is an expression of turgid masculinity that is hard to not find tragic even when you don’t consider the drama outside of the ring. 

I absolutely loved this whole movie from start to finish. The authenticity of the 1970s aesthetic was a treat to look at, complemented by a fittingly nostalgia-inducing classic rock playlist featuring songs everyone has heard, such as “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” and “Tom Sawyer”. The camera often focuses intensely on the sweat glistening all of these damaged men’s bodies, fetishizing the brutality without criticizing what it is that they are clearly so passionate about. Durkin’s screenplay clearly has a lot of empathy for its subject matter and it’s all the better for it. I went into this film completely blind to the real story, and if you are able, that is how I recommend you experience it as well. 

It may be easy to look at the physiques in the movie and think that this is another movie in which the actors’ physical transformations are the performances, and maybe one could argue that Efron specifically has been typecast that way for a few years now, but he accomplishes something that can only be described as career best work. Despite what I just said, his physique and passions appear to, at least on the surface, be hypermasculine, but he conveys a gentleness to all of the dramatic scenes that make it hard to not like his character despite some of his relatively inconsequential shortcomings as a husband and father. 

A thread that runs throughout is Kevin’s jealousy of his brothers, as his father notices their brutal work ethics more so than him, and seems to go out of his way to get shows for them. This jealousy escalates as the family’s fame becomes more and more widespread, and it’s put into perspective by Durkin’s script, which focuses on Kevin’s workouts, which include rigorous weight training and runs. Take that and combine it with how Kevin idolizes his father as the man who represents his family in the eyes of the country, and you’ve got a man constantly reminded of his own insecurities while desperately wanting to be able to do the same as his father. It may be easy to look at wrestling and dismiss it due to the fact that the “competition” is predetermined before the match begins, but we should ask ourselves if this is fundamentally any different than, say, a ballerina’s routine. Just because it’s a performance, that doesn’t mean the pain isn’t real.