‘The Iron Claw’ Is a Heartbreaking Tragedy and Zac Efron’s Finest Hour
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The Von Erichs were the first family of Lone Star professional wrestling in the late 1970s and 1980s, a dynasty of Dallas-based all-stars who took on all comers throughout the North Texas circuit. First there was Fritz Von Erich, the patriarch who’d begun his career in the 1950s and eventually became president of the World Class Championship Wrestling organization. Then came Kevin, the second oldest of the Von Erich brood of sons (the oldest, Jack, had died as a child) who was being groomed to be the world heavyweight champion. The next in line was David, a tall, blond joker who’d start his career tag-teaming with Kevin. Their younger sibling, Kerry, had been set to go to the Olympics for track and field in 1980 when the U.S. decided to boycott the games; he soon followed his brothers into the ring. And there was Mike, a musician who hadn’t really planned on entering the family business. He still ended up putting on the Speedo and hitting the mat regardless.
This celebrity clan of grapplers were touted for being All-American gentlemen, the kind of handsome, hulked-up dudes you could bring home to Sunday dinner. Fritz, however, had a reputation as a hard-ass taskmaster when it came to his kin. His signature move was “the Iron Claw,” in which he took his baseball-mitt-sized hand and clamped it onto an opponent’s head, squeezing hard until the guy begged for mercy or passed out. Perhaps there’s a symbolic connection here, you might think, about the way Dad won matches and how he rode his kids so hard. Maybe the real Iron Claw was [dramatic pause] his own suffocating relentlessness around family, which caused virtually all of the boys to self-destruct.
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In other words, it’s not for nothing that The Iron Claw, writer-director Sean Durkin’s biographical drama about the Von Erich family, takes its name from the patriarch’s death-grip skullcrusher or that its metaphorical significance in his legacy helps fuel this cinematic stations-of-the-cross tour. From the moment you see Fritz (played by Mindhunter‘s Holt McCallany) deploying his climactic go-to on a helpless rival in a slo-mo, black-and-white preamble, the Raging Bull vibe is already in effect. The physical violence in the ring will be nothing compared to the psychological carnage happening outside of it. And mascunlinity — that certain strain of steel-belted he-manliness that, per one character, demands that you take the ups and downs but “if you’re a real man, you never go down at all” — will be the real arena where these fights to the death take place.
“Mom tried to protect us with God. Pops tried to protect us with wrestling,” says Kevin (Zac Efron), underlining how Fritz’s sense of drive was at least one part paternal duty, one part chasing the American Dream and several parts thwarted ambition. Dad never got his shot at a championship title, which sometimes meant financial instability for the family and usually meant that his persecution complex was what was really calling the shots. If his boys could make that happen, however, by just being “the toughest, the strongest, the most successful,” then “nothing would ever hurt us again.” No pressure.
And given the way that Kevin is hitting the weights and putting in the hours between the ropes, he seems like the Von Erich’s best bet for a belt. That sense of training paying off isn’t just an onscreen phenomenon, either. As you’ve probably seen from those leaked on-set stills and the movie’s trailer, Efron gained a lot of muscle mass to play the role — not to mention learning all the right Von Erich moves; that’s him leaping off the top rope — and his Jacked Zac look is a bit of a shock. Not as shocking as the Prince Valiant haircut he’s sporting, but still: It’s a transformative gamble that ends up being more than a Method-y stunt. That pumped-up physique makes him look like a god. The lost, needy look in his eyes, especially when he’s around his father, makes him seem like a frightened lad playing adult dress-up. By pitching his performance between those two poles, Efron gets at what drove Kevin: discipline, love, and fear. He anchors the movie.
Because the family that dropkicks together sticks together, however, you never forget that The Iron Claw is, first and foremost, an ensemble movie. Harris Dickinson is David, the rangier cut-up among the siblings who Dad starts to favor when Kevin wavers. Ditto Jeremy Allen White’s David, the stocky would-be Olympian who’s recruited into the ring by his ramrod Great Santini of a father, and ends up doing better on the circuit then both of them. (The Bear has already sold many folks on the fact White is not only a hell of an actor, but can do a lot with silences, pauses, those peepers, and a kind of simmering soulfulness. This movie should convince whatever few naysayers are left that he’s the real deal.) Stanley Simons’ Mike wants nothing more than to be in a band that has a real chance of being the next Foghat, yet is soon reminded that being a Von Erich means doing what you’re told, period. Lily James is Pam Adkisson, who offers Kevin her hand in marriage and a sense of salvation. Maura Tierney’s Ma Von Erich gives us a prime example of how even a loving maternal figure can become collateral damage in a dysfunctional family dynamic.
If you know the story of the Von Erichs, and how their dad’s quest for glory affected each of these young men as well as the women who loved them, then you know that tragedy had a way of dogging these brothers for decades. Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Nest) doesn’t skimp on the pathos, or the sense that Kevin’s obsession over the family being “cursed” might have had some sort of metaphysical merit. There are times when the movie comes close to being an outright feel-bad sports movie. (And Durkin didn’t even include the youngest Von Erich offspring Chris, whose story didn’t get a happy ending, either. The fact that he’s completely M.I.A. is, frankly, a little weird.) There are also times when interactions and stand-offs that should be dramatic suplexes fizzle or fall flat, and an odd tangent involving the afterlife that should be corny but turns out to nearly move you tears. It’s a messy movie about messy lives, occasionally in ways you wish it wasn’t.
But The Iron Claw is also a story of redemption that’s less about pinning down opponents and much more about breaking cycles. That’s partially why Efron’s performance is the one that sticks with you, since so much of the film is about one extremely ripped manchild trying to step out of his father’s inescapable shadow and into the sunlight. The idea that peace and ever-elusive paternal love was always one piledriver away was a philosophy that fueled Kevin’s every waking moment. He finally had to cry uncle to get away from the generational chokehold of family. The Von Erichs rightfully remain wrestling royalty. As the movie makes plain, the only way that Kevin was ever going to come out a winner was to step as far away from the ring as possible.
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