Films for Breakfast

The story of the Von Erich brothers is one of the most tragic and shocking in all of sports history – one that is so relentlessly sad that it feels impossible to make a film that is anything but absolutely depressing to watch. Sean Durkin, who found acclaim directing the incredibly tense and character-focused drama Martha Marcy May Marlene back in 2011, steps behind the camera to attempt to tell the story of the Von Erich family correctly and respectfully. But how do you even attempt to ground a story that feels so fantastical? Almost as if it was stripped from that of a Greek tragedy? Luckily for The Iron Claw, Durkin manages to find a brilliant middle-ground between leaning into how deeply tragic and impossible their lives and fates feel, while also finding an incredible story and angle about brotherhood and perseverance underneath all the tragedy. 

The Von Erich story spans generations, but The Iron Claw primarily hones in on the late 1970s and throughout the course of the 1980s as the family ventures through the world of professional wrestling. While this is largely an ensemble focusing on the four brothers Kevin (Zac Efron), Kerry (Jeremy Allen White), Lance (Maxwell Jacob Friedman), and David (Harris Dickinson) – it primarily focuses on Kevin as the lead of the film and we see all of the events through his eyes. This paves way for what is the most impressive aspect of the film, which is Zac Efron’s stunning and utterly transformative performance. It would be so easy for an actor to milk this role simply for the trauma and heartache that accompanies Kevin’s story, but Efron brilliantly finds the humanity and perseverance underneath the muscles and trauma. 

Efron definitely shines and should earn himself an Oscar nomination if all was right with the world, but the all-together ensemble is what helps the film truly work and feel effective as the cast feels like a real-life family. It’s hard to pinpoint just one member of the supporting cast as Dickinson, White, and Friedman all turn in equally fantastic performances that are heartbreaking in different ways. The supporting casts’ outliers really impressed me as well, with Lily James delivering a quietly devastating performance as Kevin’s wife Pam as well as Maura Tierney as Doris von Erich, the mother to the brothers. Holt McCallany is an actor who I’ve always been impressed by, but his turn here as Fritz Von Erich, the father of the family, feels like a once-in-a-lifetime role where he delivers an absolutely heartbreaking and deeply unsettling performance as a father who is incredibly, deeply flawed.

All of the technical components compliment the rest of the film beautifully, specifically the hypnotic score from composer Richard Reed Parry and the haunting and surreal imagery brought to life from cinematographer Mátyás Erdély. Combining all of these factors with Sean Durkin’s eye for humanistic dramas that have a strong emphasis and concern for both realism and genuine emotion, The Iron Claw forms into a stirring and often times unsettling familial drama about a true-life tragedy that feels too surreal and painful to be real – yet Durkin and co. find a beautiful middle ground to deliver an absolutely beautiful story about brotherhood and love persevering. 

4.5/5