This The Iron Claw review contains spoilers.
Do you believe in curses? What was it Shakespeare said? “There are more things there than there are actual things you can see with your eyes”… Maybe that’s not the exact quote.
Let me preface this review by saying that the whole Downtime Bros team saw The Iron Claw together. We all share a common passion for movies and video games, but the thing that unites us most is our love of pro wrestling.
Though we often share a Warzone lobby, nothing brings us together quite like big meaty men slapping meat (if you’re a wrestling fan, you’ll know what that means…).
So, hopefully I can provide a more nuanced opinion than some mainstream outlets that see wrestling as “that fake thing rednecks watch”.
The story focuses on the Von Erich family, one of wrestling’s greatest dynasties. This family lived the sport, with three generations being part of the business. Cody Rhodes wasn’t lying when he said “wrestling has more than one royal family”.
The film starts with patriarch Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany) wrestling a match in against an unspecified opponent. After beating the man down, Fritz applies the dreaded Iron Claw, a signature move that is eventually adopted by his sons.
It’s a vice-like grip, where the Von Erich’s squeeze an adversary’s head until they either submit or pass out from the pain.
Fritz wins the match and, after the show, goes out to meet his wife Doris (Maura Tierney) and their two sons Jack Jr and Kevin.
Doris tells him she didn’t see the match (she never does) but could tell he did well by how much the crowd hated him, making Fritz laugh.
Though they hate him, this is good as Fritz is a “heel” (the pro wrestling term for a bad guy). It sounds counter-intuitive, but actually makes all the sense in the world. The more they hate you, the more likely they’ll come out in the hopes of seeing you get your ass kicked. After all, nobody would care about Batman if his rouges’ gallery was trash.
Fritz has brought a new Cadillac. His promoter says if he wants to be a star, he has to act like one – and appearance is a big part of that.
Doris isn’t best pleased as they’re living in a mobile home. But Fritz assures her that once he wins the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship (the top wrestling title at the time), he’ll be able to buy them a real house.
It soon becomes apparent that this is a large part of Fritz’s phycological makeup. Years later, he has been able to provide his family a home – but he remains bitter that he never won the big one. He believes he was always screwed out of it by the NWA board, which ultimately decides who holds the strap.
He carries this idea along with him and tries to live vicariously through his sons, who he pushes to follow in his footsteps.
The main focus of the story is Kevin (Zac Efron), the oldest of the four surviving brothers (Jack Jr died young). This dude is jacked. He looks He-Man, including the “mom just gave me a fresh trim” 70’s hair style.
As the oldest, Fritz has been grooming Kevin to become world champion. We see him win the Texas Championship, the top title in the family’s promotion – World Class Championship Wrestling.
This is big but, as you can probably guess, winning a title in a sport with a predetermined outcome, especially when your own father decides those outcomes, isn’t quite the achievement it appears to be.
The real prestige is in that illustrious ten pounds of gold known as the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship.
At a family breakfast, we meet two of the other brothers – David (Harris Dickinson), who is also training to be a wrestler, and Mike (Stanley Simons).
Mike is the baby of the bunch who isn’t all that interested in the family business – he prefers music.
This breakfast is where we first get a glimpse of Fritz’s overbearing nature. He even lists his sons in order of his favourites.
We soon see Kevin recording a scripted interview for a show later that night. There’s just one problem though – he isn’t very good at it. While he has a great body and works really well in the ring, his promo skills just aren’t there. Maybe he doesn’t have what it takes to be a breakout star after all.
He’s soon teaming with David, and the pair win their first match together (obvs). A job well done. David’s a natural at it.
After the show, they’re signing autographs outside the arena, and Kevin is approached by Pam (Lily James).
Kevin might look like a Greek god but he has about as much game as a medieval monk. This leads to her having to ask him out (we should all be so lucky).
The date goes well and they end up getting married. It doesn’t go quite as fast as I make it sound – it’s not a Disney film. Although she is technically Cinderella.
Kevin gets some more good news – he is scheduled to face Harley Race, the current NWA World Champ. Though it’s non-title bout, a good showing could seriously raise Kevin’s profile which could lead to a title shot later.
The match starts off well enough, but Kevin is knocked for six after being suplexed outside the ring onto the concrete. Despite being in real pain from the move, he eventually wins the match by disqualification.
When he tries to cut a promo on Race, he once again pulls a Liz Truss and can’t get the words out. This forces David to take over and he cuts an absolute scorcher on Race.
In the locker room, Fritz criticises Kevin for not bouncing up from a move that would cripple most people over 30.
He also congratulated David on his mic skills, which seems to bother Kevin a bit, as it seems that old Fritz’s rankings may be changing up again.
Soon after, we meet the final member of the Von Erich clan – Kerry (Jeremy Allen White). He’s a discus thrower and one of the best in the US. He’s also on the Olympic squad but, when America boycotted the 1980 summer Olympics in Moscow, he was forced to return home.
Fritz eventually asks if Kerry if he will take up pro wrestling, to which he seems genuinely excited about.
He ends up teaming with his brothers and even going on to win the NWA World Six-Man Tag Team Championship (Texas version) from The Fabulous Freebirds.
With the ensuing national exposure, David’s undeniable talent shines out and he is offered a world title program with the one and only Ric Flair – and this is where things start to take a turn for the worse.
Earlier, I asked if you believe in curses. There was a commonly-held belief that the Von Erich name carried a dark and mysterious affliction – and it’s not hard to see why.
Misfortune loomed over this family like my dad at a free buffet. In fact, after so many tragedies, Kevin refuses have his children carry the name. He also becomes so convinced of the curse that he avoids his wife and son out of fear of passing it on, like a virus.
It’s a heartbreaking story of loss, all rooted in the kids’ attempts to gain the approval of their father. So much of the adversity the brothers face could have been avoided, if only they weren’t so focused on achieving their father’s dreams.
This is clear because Fritz always co-opts the boys’ achievements. He says things like “we have a shot at the title” and “we’re going to finally have the world championship in our home”.
Yes, Fritz raised and trained the boys, but he wasn’t the one doing the work. They kept up the relentless schedule and lived in the public eye – but he sees it as his own achievement nonetheless.
Over time, Kevin begins to recognise this and is able to fall back on his own family. But it’s often too late for his brothers, crushed by the weight of their father’s lofty expectations.
Fritz is a very interesting character. You get the sense that he does genuinely love his sons, but he pushes them too hard to become what he himself wanted to be, often to their own detriment.
McCallany plays this role very well, with him being just likeable enough while also subtly and overtly manipulative.
Efron also puts on a stellar performance. Near the beginning of the film, when he’s doing his interview, I was thinking “Wow. This is a really bad promo, it;s just woeful”, until he slips up and asks to do it again.
It was at that point I realised it was supposed to be crap and that I had just played myself. Whether having fun with his brothers, grieving a loss, or “soaaaaring, flyyyying!” off the top rope, Efron understood the assignment and nails it.
Jeremy Allen White is Jeremy Allen White. Perfect. No notes.
Maura Tierny is also excellent. As the film goes on, you can slowly see her broken down piece by piece after each catastrophe befalls her family. Though she is often quite absent and simply accepting of her husband’s treatment of their boys, she still cares very deeply for them and this is evident in the way Tierny chose to play the character.
There was also fifth brother, named Chris, who was, for some reason, excluded from the film. I found this to be a questionable choice given that this isn’t a fictional story.
Chris was a real person who lived and loved, and was loved by his brothers. This omission feels a little disrespectful upon reflection – it suggests he didn’t matter as much as the others.
I also felt the film would have benefitted from being a little longer. Kerry was arguably the most famous/ successful out of the brothers, so it would have been interesting to see more time devoted to his decline. As it stands, the culmination of Kerry’s story felt a little bit abrupt – and the movie suffers for it as a result.
The Iron Claw also includes a fair bit of silliness. I mean, what in the name of all things small and fluffy was that Ric Flair impression?! After all, Flair is one of the most iconic and recognisable wrestlers of all time.
Not only did the actor playing him not look the part, he wasn’t able to match his unique cadence – at all. He couldn’t even do his trademark “WOOOOO!” properly! How can you play Ric Flair and not even get that one thing right? I don’t expect anyone to be able to match that man’s charisma, but good lord was bad.
The wrestling was also painfully slow. It was like watching two old men fight underwater. I know they’re not trained professionals, but these guys made Hulk Hogan look like Kenny Omega.
The argument that they’re actors and not wrestlers also doesn’t really hold water. Mickey Rourke had some great spots in The Wrestler after all, despite looking like someone left Chris Jericho out in the sun for too long.
However, these are relatively minor gripes. And it is still fun to see a bunch of legendary wrestlers from the past pop up from time to time.
All in all, The Iron Claw is a stellar film. It delivered a solid, albeit thoroughly tragic, story and a great cast to help tell it. Though there were a few flubs here and there, there was nothing that would land it on an episode of Botchamania. I would highly recommend it to both wrestling marks and normal functioning humans alike.
Overall Rating: 8/10
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