The Iron Claw (2023) January 7th, 2024

When I see an A24 film releasing in late December I see a movie the studio expects to be an Oscar contender. At minimum it’s Oscar bait. Unfortunately for A24, I’ll be shocked if The Iron Claw repeats their success with Everything Everywhere All at Once.

The Iron Claw is billed as the tragic story of The Von Erichs, an infamously misfortunate wrestling dynasty of the late 70s and mid 80s. Billed as ‘Cursed’ the family saw three of their four sons die (two by suicide) after pursuing careers in professional wrestling. If that premise excites you I recommend watching Season 1 Episode 4 of VICE’s series Dark Side of the Ring which tells the story better in less than a third of The Iron Claw‘s runtime.

The Iron Claw botches a potential cinematic highspot with rookie mistakes like telling-not-showing, inelegant scripting with direct expositional dialogue, and shoddy editing that left me wondering when and why the events on screen took place. One abrupt transition takes us from the emotional high of Kevin Von Erich’s (our protagonist) wedding to a scene where he walks into his parents house where his father tells him his brother David, who was just at the wedding, died in his hotel room in Japan. The film doesn’t show us David suffering from a ruptured intestine while wrestling overseas or even let us know how much time has passed since he was puking blood into a toilet at his brother’s wedding. We’re introduced to his illness in one scene and in the next he’s dead without any exploration of the stress he was under to perform at the highest levels. He’s just suddenly dead.

The Iron Claw missed one opportunity for impactful storytelling after another in favor of showing the family reacting to their own milestones. Do we see Kerry Von Erich win the NWA World’s Championship from Ric Flair? No. Do we see David partying with Flair to a degree so dangerous it could’ve led to his death? No. Do we experience the pressure Mike was under to enter the ring before he suffered a life altering injury that eventually caused him to take his own life? No. But we get a lot of Kevin staring blankly into the camera while someone explains really exciting things happened off screen.

That’s not to suggest Zac Effron’s performance was in anyway mischaracterized, Kevin Von Erich is soft-spoken and demure as Effron portrays him, which is even odder considering the public and flamboyant life of professional wrestlers. So depicting him as a smaller-than-life entertainer is actually an amazing choice on Effron’s part. Efron deserves high praise for his performance as Kevin Von Erich but his physique doesn’t resemble the Kevin Von Erich I’m familiar with. Appearance is everything in professional wrestling, how can you expect to sell tickets if you can’t sell a bump?

The performances aren’t where The Iron Claw gets caught in the ropes, it’s in the look. Zac Efron is so beefy he looks like if someone put He-Man in the Indian’s Cupboard. While that doesn’t look like the Kevin I recognize he could’ve easily played Kerry who looked like a real life Conan, but that role went to the 5’7″ Jeremey Allen White who gets swole but can’t weight lift himself to 6’2″.

I had this nagging feeling throughout The Iron Claw that it wasn’t designed to tell the most engaging or even the most accurate story, but a story that makes Kevin Von Erich and his surviving family feel better about their tragic history. I suspect that’s why we miss out on most of the grizzly sequences that would’ve made the crowd pop but might’ve tarnished the reputation of the dead and turned the dearly-departed heel. It’s easy to imagine a better version of The Iron Claw that doesn’t play it safe.

The Iron Claw is disappointing for all the marks it misses. The Iron Claw could be an amazing jumping off point for a new generation of wrestling fans but here we are 4 months after its release and no one’s talking about it. Award season has come and gone without The Iron Claw garnering a single Oscars nomination. Kevin’s sons are wrestling under the Von Erich name again, but it’s far from headline news even in the wrestling world.