The Iron Claw Will Hold You In Its Grip

Monday is about movies, and sometimes TV. Today, a review, basically - of a brilliant new, must-see film

I was very excited to see The Iron Claw - which has just made it to New Zealand cinemas via a handful of preview screenings and officially is released this week (Jan 25). I am a somewhat lapsed wrestling fan, in that I grew up in the 1980s and fell under the spell of the then-WWF when it finally made it to New Zealand screens. But it was all over for me within a couple of years. I hit high school and it was largely uncool. I moved on.

But, in my mid/late-20s, in a rush of nostalgia I rented Wrestlemania 19 - I had given up watching it after Wrestlemania 5. Seeing Hulk Hogan on the cover of a DVD brought back all sorts of intermediate-aged memories and I took a deep dive. Next minute I’m reading all the biographies, searching up facts and trivia online and watching the old Royal Rumbles…

I hook up with a Kiwi-run pro-wrestling website and start writing about this newfound retro-passion. I interview Ric Flair and Bret “The Hitman” Hart and Shane McMahon, son of the WWE owner, Vince McMahon.

So, again, for a few years there, it is all on. And then, I become a father - and it isn’t so much that I don’t want my son growing up watching wrestling, it’s that I don’t have the time. I am tired. And I have once again outgrown the ‘sport’.

That’s my background going in on The Iron Claw. Not everyone will be the same. Some will be much deeper fans, some won’t know pro-wrestling at all, beyond reputation.

It’s worth pointing out that even though I know about the Von Erich family (the subject of The Iron Claw) and have a solid background in watching and researching wrestling, I’m more excited by the fact that this movie was written and directed by Sean Durkin. I was late to the party, catching up on his 2011 drama, Martha Marcy May Marlene - which features a devastating and brilliant portrayal of a PTSD-troubled cult-survivor by Elizabeth Olsen (in her debut feature-length film performance). When I saw it I was convinced I would watch anything and everything by this brilliant filmmaker. All in.

And so I also very much loved his 2020 film, The Nest, in which Jude Law and Carrie Coon are both brilliant as partners in a 1980s couple with secrets and lies eventually bubbling to the surface. The Nest is unsettling and superb. Martha Marcy is incredible. Both films are much more than just their exquisite performances, but make room for the actors to really shine.

This informs my level of anticipation around The Iron Claw every bit as much as the fact that I used to watch Kerry Von Erich compete as “The Texas Tornado” in the late 1980s, and read about his family in the trade magazines I’d import in 1989/1990, and have twice-watched the episode of The Dark Side of The Ring which details the family and “family curse”.

So, The Iron Claw is a slightly impressionistic biopic of the Von Erichs - some biographical details are lifted, shifted, even omitted, for the sake of a smooth-running screen time and story-flow (there’s a baby brother that is as absent from this film as one of Ozzy Osbourne’s children was from his family reality TV show). And of course deep wrestling nerds will be in various chat rooms around this old internet having conniptions about the fact that certain matches recreated in this movie didn’t happen in that particular timeline, or that the actor that impersonates Ric Flair seems to sound more like Dusty Rhodes with phoney street patois, or that maybe Mike Von Erich was made out to be a much better musician and slightly worse wrestler than was actually the truth.

But none of that should ever matter, for this is, ostensibly, not a film about wrestling. Sure, Zac Efron got uncomfortably jacked, and Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) and Harris Dickinson (Triangle of Sadness) really do pull off in-ring moves and look pretty damn convincing - but there’s maybe 8-10 minutes of wrestling in this 130-minute movie. For this is a deep drama about families, about punishing fathers and desperate-to-please sons, about strange and twisted values, and about the deep grief that plagues some people, manifesting in very strange ways too.

Durkin is a writer and director who so totally understands the human condition, and is so deeply committed to strong storytelling that he knows when and how and why to move certain ‘truths’ around for the sake of a more universal point. If you want the facts about the Von Erichs there is Wikipedia’s starting point, there is a bunch of clips of the real brothers (and father) in action in the ring all over YouTube and various other pockets of the internet’s vast trousers. There are wrestling books and magazines, there is the very worthwhile aforementioned Dark Side of the Ring documentary episode (the whole series is largely fantastic). But what you see here reminds me a lot of Cynthia Lennon’s astute read on Beatles history. She said that most of the books about The Beatles were factually true, but they missed the great emotional truths.

That’s what Durkin is seeking out in all of his films: Emotional truth.

The Iron Claw is so well crafted, evocative of an era, compelling in its approach - and there are risks too. As it moves towards its closure, there is a scene that almost falls over into the hokiest melodrama; the film however is all the more stronger for that fact. That’s a classic example of a filmmaker taking clever, calculated risks.

The music is sublime, the performances are wonderful, the drama is great - and like all good dramas there are plenty of laughing moments, some genuine comedy, some shake-your-head weirdness. Lily James is excellent in her supporting role as Pam, Kevin’s partner. Maura Tierney plays Doris, the mother of the clan, and though she, again, is a supporting role at best, she has one scene in particular - wordless - that is about as good as it gets. Her work throughout the film, always in the background, is pitch-perfect, and ultimately heartbreaking.

The same is true for all of the Von Erich sons, with Zac Efron offering his finest work (as Kevin), Jeremy Allen White and Harris Dickinson (as Kerry and David) are great in the ensemble, as well as in their smaller chances to shine individually. And the unknown (to me) Stanley Simons (as baby brother Mike) has a lot of tricky work to accomplish - and nails it. Also Holt McCallany (Mindhunter) plays the brutal, military-ish father Fritz with terrifying accuracy and a strange allure.

It’s the sort of film that should pull anyone in - and is reminiscent, I guess, of The Wrestler, in terms of treating similar subject matter as great cautionary tale, rather than celebrating the art form, and getting caught up in the pageantry.

I read reviews like this and wonder what the person could have been thinking. I know we’re all entitled to our own opinions, and this great internet has both enabled that to the point of absurdity, and been an important way of shifting the platforms and allowing in more voices, but really, you have to see The Iron Claw as more than a wrestling film. It just also happens to be one of the better takes on the out and out absurdity and cruelty of the ‘sport’.

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