A24’s The Iron Claw is not your typical sports movie. You won’t be rooting for the hero to score a championship belt, pin a villain to the mat, or sprint through his hometown while the town cheers him on. Thank God. Instead, writer/director Sean Durkin unspools the true story of the Von Erich brothers and their rise to wrestling fame with a mounting anxiety that’s downright Kubrickian. At first glance, this movie might look like a straightforward biography, but it’s so much more. Thanks to Durkin’s uncanny filmmaking, the story takes on several gradations, working as both an intimate portrait of a family in crisis and a searing indictment on good ol’ American ambition.
Named after the Von Erich brothers’ signature move, The Iron Claw opens on the sweaty, bulging visage of Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany), the family patriarch, as he struggles to break free from an opponent. It’s a haunting glimpse into the boiling rage that’ll eventually ravage his family like a virus. It’s the early 1960’s and Fritz emerges from the arena to greet his wife Doris (Maura Tierney) and his adolescent sons. Although worried that Fritz just purchased a car they can’t afford, he tells them not to worry, nothing can stop them. They need to be tough. Weakness is the enemy. Fritz talks a good game, but underneath the bravado he harbors a well of resentment for a world he thinks robbed him of a future in wrestling. “They kept it from me,” he recites to his sons like a mantra. “You can get it back for me!”
Fast forward to 1980. Dallas, Texas. Fritz runs a wrestling promotion company that organizes matches for the local community. It’s also a perfect springboard to indoctrinate his four sons into the game. The eldest, Kevin (Zac Efron), is the leader. A sensitive, quiet figure who looks like he was chiseled from granite, Kevin can wrestle like a champ, but struggles to promote himself. Efron’s physical transformation from wispy heartthrob to a mass…
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