Film Review: The Iron Claw doesn't pull its punches on fraternal love and tragedy

Zac Efron in The Iron Claw. Picture: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

• The Iron Claw
• ★★★★☆
• Cinema release

It’s a very particular kind of person who wishes to become the world heavyweight champion in the badly choreographed pantomime of professional wrestling, but such is the ambition of Fritz von Erich (Holt McCallany), aka The Iron Claw (15A), who rose through the ranks of American professional wrestling in the 1960s without ever taking home the ultimate prize.

Undaunted, Fritz raises his brood of sons — Kevin (Zac Efron), David (Harris Dickinson), Kerry (Jeremy Allen White) and Mike (Stanley Simons) — as warriors of the ring, driving them on relentlessly to ever-higher standards as he vicariously lives out his dreams of glory. 

But while the backdrop to writer-director Sean Durkin’s film is that of professional wrestling, The Iron Claw, which opens in 1979, and is based on a true story, is a wholly unconventional sports movie.

The film begins with Kevin telling us, via voiceover, that his family has always been cursed, and much of what follows is concerned with exploring the phenomenally strong bond that exists between the von Erich brothers, a bond that is tested time and again by tragedy (much of which, it should be said, is self-inflicted).

It’s rare to see a mainstream movie that celebrates positive male bonding, and the co-stars certainly make the most of the opportunity: all four of the actors playing the brothers are strong, with Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White to the fore.

Sean Durkin’s script is rich in emotion but only rarely slips into sentimentality: in a testosterone-fuelled world, and especially one that is so completely dominated by their bullnecked patriarch of a father, the boys are a human chain in which each brother is devoted to ensuring that no one becomes the weakest link.

Tough in tone, touching in its exploration of fraternal love, The Iron Claw is a surprisingly profound film.