Guest Post: The Iron Claw (2024)

The Iron Claw Comes At A Cost For One Family.

 

By Jonas Schwartz-Owen

 

The Iron Claw, Sean Durkin’s biography of legendary wrestling family The Von Erichs, is a refreshingly methodical film with many quiet moments, harkening back to the New Hollywood films of the 1970s. 

 

The Von Erich patriarch (Holt McCallany from Netflix’s Mindhunter) owns the World Class Championship Wrestling company. A former wrestler himself, where he utilized the Iron Claw move, he has passed his compulsion about wrestling onto his boys. The adult sons do not even have time to form their own passions before they dive headfirst into the ring. His most successful, Kevin (Zac Efron), takes on the family burdens and everything comes at a cost. The tragic tale of the family is part superstition, part the brutality of the sport. 

 

Efron is unrecognizable as the wrestler. Bulked up in both his body and his face, fashioned with a bowl cut, Efron leaves behind any teen idol pretentions for the role. He brings an earnestness and sweetness that hits the heartstrings successfully like Sylvester Stallone’s performance in the inaugural Rocky (1976). 

 

McCallany is intense as the wrestling world version of Gypsy‘s Mama Rose. Single-minded, he treats his boys as an extension of his legacy. They are his second, third, fourth, and fifth chance, and it’s almost a Greek tragedy how he pays (as an original story, it would seem contrived, but this was real life).

 

Huge fans of Jeremy Allen White (from his award winning The Bear) may be disappointed by his minor role in the film. Though he is not featured for much of the two-and-a-quarter hour running time, his determination and frustrations as brother Kerry are well done. 

 

Lily James (Cinderella) is given little to work with in the nominal wife role, but as the matriarch, Maura Tierney (Showtime’s The Affair) is heartbreaking, representing an overly supportive wife who quietly laments her constant loss.

 

Durkin, who made a splash with the contemplative Martha Marcy May Marlene creates a very ‘70s Americana feel: the deliberate, un-splashy pace, the washed-out hues, the deglamorization of a beloved American tradition, that are reminiscent of the films of Academy Award winner Hal Ashby (Bound for Glory). 

 

Along with the exciting, well-choreographed wrestling scenes, Durkin has presented a poignant slice of life. The Iron Claw interprets the famed lives of people foreign to many audience members and captures the commonality of their struggles.