Review: "The Iron Claw" Is An Honest, Emotional Family Drama

Humanity conquers the ring in this modern Shakespearean tragedy.

January 4, 2024

Back in the 1800s, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, people did many questionable things. Some swapped out blood for milk in transfusions, while others snapped pseudo-selfies with recently deceased relatives. Some dug up bodies and sold them to doctors, while others ate arsenic-laced chalk to keep pale.

And, of course, we have the real doozy: some people owned slaves and fought for their “right” to own them.

But another questionable thing happened in the 19th century: some demented yokel sat before a slice of apple pie, saw a chunk of cheddar cheese, and said, “Hmmmm…..”

One would think it’d have been pairing, but strangely, it worked well enough that two centuries later, it remains a staple of bizarre (but delicious) food pairings (unlike eggs and ketchup, you heathens). It was an unexpected marvel, a curiously delectable concoction.

It was a pleasant surprise.

Few events in life enrapture us like a pleasant surprise. We crave the anticipated, although we incessantly chase the unexpected. Alas, we all know every manwhore eventually retracts his rumpleforeskin and settles into monogamous bliss (or insists on his immaturity and dies diseased and alone, but we’ll ignore that outcome).

So it stands firm, even for movies, that inescapable truth: getting what we came for will always be the most comfortable outcome, but when a movie genuinely surprises us, upending our middling expectations to give us something earnest, thoughtful, and heartfelt, it’s arguably the most experience we can have at the movies.

The Iron Claw is a pleasant surprise.

Imagine entering the theater ignorant. It’s a true story, but one known predominantly to fans of the sport played by the Von Erich brothers: wrestling, the common perception of which is that it’s fake and trashy, shamelessly appealing to the lowest common denominator while tanking the collective intelligence of the American public. If someone had evaded the wrestling world, they couldn’t be blamed for assuming The Iron Claw would be a paint-by-numbers sports flick about spandex-clad Schwarzenegger wannabes tossing each other around a ring.

However, if they hadn’t disavowed those preconceived notions by the time the credits roll, they certainly could be blamed for that.

The Iron Claw spends its first half lulling you into a false sense of security, where you question the story's value and why we should invest in it. During this time, it’s a genuine family drama, for good or ill. Kevin Von Erich has big dreams in that small ring; one could reasonably conclude the combat in that tiny square serves dual purposes: exuding the traditional masculinity his father, Fritz, demands with manipulative narcissism and keeping physically near his brothers, David, Mike, and Kerry, who are truly his only family. While Fritz chastises his sons for pursuing their ambitions or developing autonomy at the expense of compensating for his failures, their mother, Doris, refuses to acknowledge them at all, dismissing Kevin’s request that she talk to Fritz about his critique of Mike’s musical dreams as father-son issues.

Within this toxic home develops a deep but twisted devotion to family, reinforced by countless instances of brotherhood, clinging to each other as the only recourse for emotional connection, and Fritz’s selfishness. He even tells his sons of his ever-changing ranking of which child he likes most; moving up or down depends on soothing his ego by delivering successes he can appropriate. Look no further than when Kerry, robbed of his chance at the 1979 Moscow Olympics after the US boycott, returns home. Fritz sees a rival win the heavyweight title on TV. Incensed with entitlement, he convinces Kerry to surrender his athletic ambitions and commit to wrestling… for Kerry’s benefit.

It never feels preachy or tries to pound home the message; it trusts that the reality is enough. Kevin’s dreams are not genuinely his but his father’s. The brothers' bond is a creation of their father’s emotional oppression and their personalities. Kevin is bound to Fritz’s self-aggrandizement but still needs to be with his brothers in that ring. No one is solely creator, inflictor, or victim. Fritz is the tormentor and his sons the tormented, no question, but everyone gets magnified by one another, an unspoken reality of abusive families that’s difficult to capture on screen.

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By exploring so fully the inner workings of the Von Erich household, we move through each development, even if hollow (does every sports movie need the pointless, undeveloped wife?), with a deep understanding of how any hardship would impact each character and therefore the collective; every nuance takes us beyond the principle of tragedy and into the specifics of our characters. You hate Fritz not just because he’s a detestable ingrate but because you fully grasp why his awfulness traumatizes Kevin, David, Mike, and Kerry individually. You sympathize with Kevin not only because his father deprives him of affection and validation but because he genuinely loves his family, parental influence aside, and the creators of that family don't care. The parents have created a situation in which the brothers only have each other, but by doing so, made one where they will inevitably lose each other.

By the time the torrent of tragedy strikes, we realize the family dynamic took shape in a way immersive enough to grant us the emotional understanding necessary to have the horrors resonate but not so manipulative that we’re straddling the line between observer and participant. We never empathize or feel part of the family, just fully informed and genuinely understanding. Most movies would’ve cheapened their subjects by trying to draw insincere parallels or reach for a big moment. Although it ropes us in, The Iron Claw keeps us (smartly and more sincerely) at a distance and never surrenders to trope. Mike’s suicide isn’t met with swelling music and a montage as we get the voiceover of his lengthy suicide note. We certainly think that’s where it’s going before Durkin slaps us with the reality that Mike could only muster a few words.

That’s all that’s left; that’s all his family can use to move on.

It won’t necessarily make you cry, but it will make you sigh in pained exasperation, stunned in disbelief that it's happening again, hopeless at the prospect that it will never stop. It’s an emotional anvil that crushes you, and that realization adds to the depth because we know Kevin suffered a billion times more.

Strangely, these moments, or at least their overall execution, are where the film finds its one flaw: letting up.

Writer-director Sean Durkin omitted the sixth brother, Chris Von Erich, for fear that his suicide would prove too burdensome for an already depleted audience.

Too bad. That’s life. It happened. That’s the Von Erich story. No one has the right to erase it because we can’t handle it. Kevin Von Erich has had to handle it his entire life; the film sacrifices power and integrity by refusing to fully honor that struggle.

In the way that punch-pulling manifests on-screen, it’s less damning, though still noticeable. Kerry, anguished over the fabled family “curse” constantly disrupting their lives, commits suicide. It’s a disservice to the drug issues and marital strife that played a role in Kerry’s death; cinematically, the timing robs Kerry of the same response given to Mike, David, and even Kerry's earlier motorcycle crash and amputation. By the time he shoots himself in the family’s backyard (in a tense, expertly-shot scene), we've spent our emotional energy.

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Durkin spent an hour laying the groundwork, building to these moments where everything we’ve put into watching this frustrating family dynamic gets released. It was the right choice, but placing Kerry’s amputation and Mike’s death so far from Kerry’s suicide leaves us empty, not anguished, so much that we cannot muster the emotion to feel pleased for Kerry reuniting with David, Mike, and Jack, Jr. in the afterlife (the film’s only contrived, manipulative moment). It feels like the movie should’ve ended already.

One could argue this was intentional, and Durkin could claim he wanted to leave us so drained that we sat and contemplated with what little energy we had left, some parallel between us and Kevin’s more subdued reaction when he sits with Kerry’s body in the dining room, but that level of consideration is a lot for any filmmaker to demand.

Regardless, we don’t leave feeling like some mild pacing issues and one poor decision wreck the entire movie. We depart while reflecting on our lives with the same degree of somber resolution Kevin has as he embraces fatherhood while grieving his brothers.

We leave awed at how a movie based on a true story could, for once, be as advertised, enraged at everything that led to so much tragedy, and, most of all, feeling something real, not because a filmmaker pulled out every trick in the book, but because he tossed the book and respected the story.

Countless trailers claim their movie is a “must-see,” but the number of films that earn that praise is very countable; The Iron Claw is one of them. It’s a must-see because it reminds us, perhaps better than any movie this year, of how a great movie can send a message and make us feel more deeply than anything we don’t experience directly. It’s a reminder that we need to reexamine our relationships and the interpersonal values we hold in such high regard.

But more than anything, it’s a testament to the power of being pleasantly surprised and why everyone’s story, no matter how difficult to watch, is worth telling.