‘The Iron Claw’ explores tragic curse in wrestling family
Content warning: this review explores multiple real-life deaths by suicide.
In 2008, director Darren Arfonky released “The Wrestler,” the story of a wrestler whose life was slowly consumed by a business that he loved.
Since 2008, not a single movie explored the more harmful and brutal side of wrestling, until Sean Durkin wrote and produced “The Iron Claw,” under studio A24, which was released last year on December 22, 2023.
With the help of Kevin Von Erich, a former professional wrestler and the sole survivor in a family of wrestling brothers, this film delves into a story about the destruction, pain, and addiction caused by wrestling and tells the story in an honest, heartbreaking, and sorrowful way.
The movie highlights The Von Erich family, a wrestling family during the 1980s that went from territory to territory wrestling, later on depicting what is referred to as “the real-life curse” of The Von Erichs, all of which is based on a true story.
The father of the family, Fritz Von Erich, died of cancer in 1997 at age 68. However, before his death, five of his six sons had already died. The first two died accidentally. Jack Jr. was shocked and drowned in a puddle (at age 6) in 1959. In 1984, at age 25, David died from enteritis in a Tokyo hotel from inflammation of the small intestine often caused by food or water poisoning or diseases like celiac.
However, three of his adult sons (Mike, Chris, and Kerry) all died by suicide in the years after their brother David’s death.
Kevin Von Erich is the last surviving son. Today, he is a retired wrestler, living in Hawaii.
The movie immediately pulls in viewers with its grimy charm, introducing the audience to the wrestling brothers, and their father, whom we slowly see change into a more and more demanding person throughout the film, while “the curse” begins to take place, rocking the family.
The film is filled with wrestling memorabilia, and cameos from wrestling figures, like Maxwell Jacob Friedman and Chavo Guerrero, playing wrestlers Lance Von Erich and The Sheik.
The movie also highlights notable figures of the territory days of professional wrestling, including The Fabulous Freebirds, Harley Race, and Bruiser Brody to list a few.
Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, Stanely Simons, and Holt McCallany give life to the men of the Von Erich family.
The performances, especially those of Efron and Allen White. Efron delivers one of the strongest works of his career so far in the movie, showing his growth as an actor and separation from what he is known for, a pretty boy in Disney movies. Allen White’s performance as Kerry is painful and beautiful all at the same time.
Dickinson and Simons’s performances, while short, still serve the movie powerfully.
Together, they all tell a complicated story with care and justice, portraying the brothers in a way that we can connect to them and feel for them when tragedy strikes.
Every loss of a brother feels more and more impactful, and the tone slowly begins to change throughout the movie with each passing, truly feeling more and more empty as the film continues.
