Wrestling with Fate

Curses are a nasty business and generational ones infinitely more so. It’s easy to call a catastrophe or two bad luck, but when enough ill has befallen you over a short enough period of time, it won’t be long before you start calling Eugene from Hey Arnold! (1996-2004) fortunate.

Today, we call this natural enough reaction “depression” or “generational trauma,” but these more enlightened monikers were not available or only in their infancies in the long-haired 80s and 90s, when Sean Durkin’s The Iron Claw (2023) takes place. In this film (based, astonishingly enough, on a true story), the Von Erich family of professional wrestlers must confront a baffling series of horrors from the death of a young child to a crippling in the ring and even suicide. The fact that it manages to do so with minimal emotional handwringing and with exciting, tightly shot and choreographed scenes of physical competition is itself the kind of miracle that makes one believe in curses.

The cause of the family’s misery is the four brothers’ domineering father, Fritz (Holt McCallany), whose success in wrestling never quite reached the apex he’d hoped for. His boys will have to pay the price. They must be the best, must become NWA world champions, grow their father’s Texas-based wrestling territory, and win the hearts of fans everywhere. Given the tallness of this order, it’s amazing how far the brothers went in achieving these goals. They became legends in Texas, which the movie hints at with the brief scenes of crowds forming outside the Sportatorium and long, JFK-like lines awaiting funeral processions. Though Fritz’s selfishness and cruelty may be the cause of the curse, the film is smart enough not to make him a cartoonish monster. McCallany’s father is a cold, driven machine of a man whose great sin is his willingness to sacrifice his sons on the rough-hewn altar of ambition. Then again, he has proffered himself on the very same smooth surface, driven his sons to ruin by the failure of his body’s offering.

In this way, Fritz becomes a pathetic character at the head of a tragic family. The brothers are, it must be admitted, somewhat two-dimensional in this movie. Durkin is trying (and largely succeeding) at taking material that could easily fill four hours and cutting it down to a lean two and change. Inevitably, parts will be missing (including an entire brother who simply doesn’t exist in the world of The Iron Claw) and characters will be flattened. This group regrettably includes the only Von Erich sibling still with us, Kevin (Zac Efron), who acts as our point of view. He feels puppy-like, a dim spyglass through whom we observe events. His perspective is necessary, though it often feels unrealized or blurred. Maybe Kevin is actually like that; I don’t know.

The Iron Claw’s faults, however, are greatly outmatched by its strengths. My wife, who knows very little about professional wrestling, was gripped the entire time, even cried during the final sequence. Perhaps then cinematic magic has triumphed again; the curse is broken and Kevin, story committed to the silver screen, has happily had the last laugh.