‘The Iron Claw’ review: Hollywood heavyweights become cursed wrestling brothers

These past years, the Hollywood wrestling picture has become synonymous with the soul-searching sport movie, one that’s shaded in tragic tones. First there was Bennett Miller’s disturbing Foxcatcher, with Channing Tatum. Then came David Arquette’s homespun, painful-to-watch doc You Cannot Kill David Arquette. And now, slamming down on the celluloid canvas, is The Iron Claw.

Intrigued by the idea of an American sporting dynasty, writer-director Sean Durkin (the filmmaker behind sublime cult tale Martha Marcy May Marlene and bourgeois take-down The Nest) turns his lens on the real-life Von Erich family. They may have ruled the wrestling roost in America in the 1980s but, subjected to unimaginable tragedy along the way, it came at great personal cost.

At the heart of this spandex-sporting clan is the overbearing patriarch, former wrestler-turned-coach Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany), who turns his boys into win-at-all-costs competitors. Even the past loss endured by Fritz and his wife, Doris (Maura Tierney), when their eldest boy Jack died aged six, in a tragic accident, isn’t enough to derail him.

Initially, Fritz’s focus is on Kevin (Zac Efron), largely our eyes onto this world of shaggy mullets and musty jock-straps. But despite his obvious sporting acumen, Kevin rather lacks the required showmanship in the ring, certainly compared to his younger brother David (Harris Dickinson).

To reveal too much about what follows will rob you of the film’s true-life shock value, and there’s plenty of that. As potent as the wrestling scenes are, The Iron Claw is much more about the bruising nature of blood ties and how fate can befall a family.

In reality, there were six Von Erich sons, but Durkin wisely trims one out of the story to simplify matters. After Kevin and David comes Kerry (The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White), an ultra-competitive athlete who misses out on the 1980 Moscow Olympics due to the USA boycott and takes up with the family business. Even youngster Mike (Stanley Simons), at first seemingly at odds with half-nelsons and the like, gets sucked into the sport.

It seems nobody can resist Fritz’s overtures, a trait that is aided by McCallany, the veteran character actor (in everything from Nightmare Alley to Sully) who finally gets a role worthy of his muscular charisma. As for his sons, Efron’s transformation into the muscle-bound Kevin impresses, while both British actor Dickinson (Triangle of Sadness) and White bring wide-eyed intensity to their roles.

Where The Iron Claw slightly disappoints is not so much the milieu that Durkin conjures up – you can tell he loves wrestling – but the impact all this tragedy makes. As the Grim Reaper lingers over the Von Erichs as if he had nowhere else to go, you’d imagine it might elicit a cascade of emotions from the watching audience.

Rather, Durkin’s film is clinical in its look at the Von Erichs, an under-the-microscope tale that lacks the unfettered passions and explosive confrontations you might hope for. Certainly, it’s not for those looking for fist-pumping sporting triumphalism. But in this age of franchise vapidity, it’s still a film worth grappling with.

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