Can you smell what this review is cookin’ 3.5 readers?
BQB here with a review of The Iron Claw.
Professional wrestling. We tend to look at it as a joke. Giant, musclebound men in spandex shorts shouting hilarious barbs at each other. They all have their own elaborate costumes, backstories, moves, etc. They pretend like its real but we all know its fake, right? I mean surely, a “sport” where dudes get on TV wearing feather boas and silly hats and threaten to tear each other apart and hit each other with chairs has to be fake.
Ah, but this film invites the viewer behind the scenes of professional wrestling to understand two core concepts:
#1 – Even though the storylines are fake, the pain is real. It’s impossible for dudes to throw each other around like this and not suffer terrible injuries, both mental and physical.
#2 – The best showmen, i.e. those most loved by the crowd, benefit with better fake storylines that move them up in the ranks, get them more fights, more time in the ring and ultimately more money and fame. Ergo, despite the fakeness of it all, there’s still motivation to train and push themselves harder, which comes at a cost.
Enter the world of the allegedly cursed Von Ehrich family, a multi-generational wrestling clan who, unless there’s a historian who knows better, probably suffered more than anyone else in the name of a fake sport.
Father Fritz (Holt McCallany) takes his family on tour in a trailer, living a poor life as he chases fame and the hope of bringing home the big title belt, but alas, in his eyes, is always screwed out of it by the National Wrestling Association, the company that he dedicates his life, blood, sweat and tears too.
He pledges his family won’t always live like this and fast forward years later, they don’t. They live on a big Texas ranch where mother Doris (Maura Tierney) makes breakfast every day. Adult sons Kevin and David (Zac Efron and Harris Dickinson) have carried on the family tradition, making big names for themselves in pro-wrestling.
For awhile, it seems like a good life, a family that has made a good living dedicating themselves to a sport and it has paid off, but alas, there is a price to be paid and boy do they ever pay it. Fritz is simply obsessed with bringing home that belt, the same belt he felt he was cheated out of, so living vicariously through his sons, he pushes all of them to get into wrestling, even those who probably shouldn’t.
When President Carter pulls America out of the Olympics in the late 1970s, the third brother Kerry (Jeremy Allen White of the Bear fame), an Olympic shotputter, loses his chance to compete for gold. Fritz pushes him into the ring and though Kerry is athletic, the pain is something he just isn’t used to. He turns to steroids and alcohol to keep up and suffers a downward spiral.
Meanwhile, youngest brother Mike (Stanley Simons) is a skinny weakling, a nerdy music protege who would be a source of pride for his ability to carry a tune in any other family but is considered the black sheep in this one for his lack of natural talent when it comes to pummeling giant, sweaty men. He gives up his love of music for the ring to please the old man and as often happens in such films (and in life) there’s what Dad thinks is best and what son thinks is best and when son goes through the motions of pleasing Dad it usually doesn’t end well.
I won’t go into further detail and spoil the movie other than to say the first hour is a high of the family achieving a lot of success and you really root for them, thinking anything is possible in this great country, that isn’t it wonderful they all came together to find such success where dudes act like dum dums in the ring for a crowd’s amusement.
The second hour is a emotional rollercoaster that keeps going down, down, down, leaving you in a great depression as you wonder just how much pain can one family endure as the tragedies never cease. In fact, the family experienced so much heartache that the film wasn’t able to fit it all in and there were further stories of suffering left on the cutting room floor. So much was there suffering that the writers apparently made an excecutive decision to leave some of it out lest the audience not want to commit hari kari. I admit by the end I was feeling pretty low and wondering why I even bothered going to see this movie in the first place, though it well written, well acted, serves as the first Oscar bait of the season and is a cautionary tale against, I don’t know what exactly. Ignoring your health in the name of success? Pushing your children too hard to catch the dreams that passed you by?
As for the acting, it’s superb. Zac Efron is barely recognizable having put on a ton of muscle. Holt McCallany has earn a rep playing hard nosed pricks with perfect diction and does it again. This might be his chance at winning an oscar for doing so, as it also might be Efron’s. Dickinson and Simons I never heard of before but both play their parts well. I haven’t seen Maura Tierney in a movie in a long time but she plays the long suffering mother who puts up with too much with grace and dignity and never complains despite having every reason to well. Lilly James rounds out the cast as Pam, the wife who saves Kevin (Efron’s) life with love and support.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
Bookshelf Battle 