Wrestling Biopic The Iron Claw Skips Some Facts, but Tells Emotional Truths

The Iron Claw interprets the tragic story of the Von Erich family, wrestling royalty known for the “curse” that saw three of five sons die by suicide before middle age. Through its thorough but not unlimited portrayal of the travails and triumphs of a legendary family of athletes, the film adds to ongoing debates about entertainment drawn from tragedy and what artistic license is acceptable in the adaptation of real events. 

Writer/director Sean Durkin’s drama is largely carried on the broad strapping shoulders of Zac Efron as Kevin Von Erich, aided by Jeremy Allen White as his brother Kerry and a star turn by Harris Dickinson as their brother David. Stanley Simons rounds out the focal generation of the family as youngest brother Mike. Mike’s real-life youngest brother, Chris Von Erich, does not appear in the film and is not mentioned.

The Iron Claw starts in grayscale, as we meet Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany), a vicious wrestler who dreams of greatness, known for his signature move, “The Iron Claw.” After the match, he shows his wife Doris (Maura Tierney) and children that he’s replaced their car with a Cadillac despite their financial woes (their mobile home is hooked up to it). It’s the image his ambitions want to display to the world. The next thing we know, the film is in color, more than a decade has passed and the family lives in a ranch house in Denton, Texas, where Fritz owns and operates World Class Championship Wrestling.

So begins the family’s journey for a world wrestling championship, as the ambitious, controlling and emotionally abusive patriarch pushes his sons to greatness and peril. The Iron Claw is not obsessed with the technical business aspects of running a wrestling promotion, but rather the requirements and consequences at hand. Nonetheless, it’s held back from greatness in part by the depiction of Fritz, whose dialogue is written as such an expression of serial killer-adjacent, bootstraps moralism that it often feels like a rough draft of a stereotype. The upside of this is that the family truly appears to be victims of Fritz’s brusque and toxically old-fashioned manner, with the obvious caveat that he comes off almost cartoonish even though all his grown, muscular sons are more afraid of disappointing him than being physically hurt by him. 

Kevin says their mother tried to protect the family with God, while their father tried to protect them with wrestling. But Doris is a non-character through long stretches of the film, despite a slightly-too-neat moment of liberation toward the film’s end. She’s more than set dressing, but her purely distant depiction often makes her more of an observer than a participant. Part of Doris’ purpose in The Iron Claw is expressing the family’s self-reliant ethos, as she—like her husband—refuses to talk to her sons about their emotional or personal problems. Even religion seems more like a personal refuge from any unstated misgivings she might have about who her husband has become than a blanket for the family (though they’re beloved at church). 

In direct contrast, Kevin’s relationship with Pam (Lily James) is presented as much more wholesome and mutually affirming. Pam is a comfort to Kevin throughout the film and James is a comfort to us, as a kind and thoughtful presence that isn’t native to the world of wrestling but becomes beloved by the Von Erich clan. Still, she alternates between partner and passenger; the film focuses on the brothers, while she’s left to pick up the pieces of her breaking husband as disaster repeatedly strikes.

Decades of familial turmoil passing across a couple hours of screentime feels like a magic trick made from impressive editing and a combination of score and soundtrack that draws you into the setting without inducing eyerolls. One of the most enjoyable and intense scenes before tragedy starts unfurling is a montage of Kevin, David and Kerry walking out in their shiny, colorful, Texas-themed outfits to wrestle while Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” plays. Matthew Hannam’s cutting allows for a lot of fluidity, but can compress the chronology enough to perhaps invite confusion, although it is not quite debilitatingly disruptive. 

The aforementioned montage culminates in a particularly captivating and stress-inducing shot where the three brothers’ faces fade into each other, conveying the intensity of their experience as wrestlers: The exhaustion, the shortcuts taken in recovery that lead to further suffering. The Iron Claw does an excellent job of selling the grit required of professional wrestlers from the late 1970s to early 1990s, but also the appeal and spectacle. Part of this is done through multiple scenes which shift perspective between taking place on television and as in-ring/on-set/behind-the-scenes depictions of the creation of the televised wrestling experience. The first time this shift is done for a major fight, the pageantry, the glitz and the glamor hit me right in the face.

Though it’s relatively unsparing in depicting the grime that pays for wrestling glamor, as the relentless physical self-improvement clashes with mental health problems and substance abuse, it becomes glaring when and where The Iron Claw pulls its punches. While it makes sense thematically that the Von Erich who died in childhood is never shown on screen but referenced in conversation, the complete absence of one of the Von Erich brothers who was a professional wrestler and met a shocking untimely end is more jarring. It may not be readily apparent to anyone without a background in wrestling history, but will become so if the captivating film inspires any further digging, where interested viewers will learn about all sorts of other changes made to the story, of varying levels of importance. This rabbit-hole-inducing omission feels more egregious than avoiding arrest records.

Meanwhile, Kevin—the only of the main protagonists still living—comes across as a relative paragon whose greatest flaw is an obsession with the curse he fears is following his family. This sounds illogical, of course, but it is certainly hard-won through calamity. Aside from what might seem like a manicured image, his transition into management and ownership happens mostly off-screen, while a confrontation about the money his father stole from him as a performer is angrily (and unsatisfyingly) dismissed.

The Iron Claw focuses intimately on the Von Erich brothers, painting a tender and forlorn picture of their misfortunes, but it’s hard to call it unflinching. Before and after hope turns to tragedy, this is an engrossing tale, and its ability to channel the sound and image of wrestling’s ascent to global commercial importance into the backdrop for a family’s material ascent and decomposition is fascinating. Some of the ahistorical artistic decisions are more forgivable than others—transplanting my favorite Ric Flair promo interview from a Dusty Rhodes match to a Von Erich match felt like a present for me personally—but as a pure feat of entertainment, this works. As a biography, though, the choices of what (or who) to include can feel bleak. Bleaker still, the sickest part of the film is that the manicured, but still tragic, tale made me want to watch more wrestling.

Director: Sean Durkin
Writer: Sean Durkin
Starring: Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, Maura Tierney, Holt McCallany, Lily James
Release Date: December 22, 2023

Kevin Fox, Jr. is a freelance writer with an MA in history, who loves videogames, film, TV, and sports, and dreams of liberation. He can be found on Twitter @kevinfoxjr.