The Iron Claw

Despite it’s tragic true story The Iron Claw is a movie that is full of joy.

The first half of the flick sets up the Von Erich family, a Texas wrestling dynasty lucky enough to have four boys who can mostly be stars at the same time. 

The movie doesn’t explain how the territories worked in the 1970s and 1980s and simply suggests that this is a family business run by the Fritz Von Erich and that there is a world championship title that Fritz believes should be held by one of his boys. 

Von Erich is the kind of dad who lets the children know which son is his favorite at any given moment. 

“But the rankings can always change.”

I’m a big wrestling fan and all I really knew about these guys was that they were huge in Texas and they all died. 

The movie shows you what was special about them, and the pressure they lived under and (and this is vital) how much joy they had. 

Given how it all worked out few of us would trade places with The Von Erichs. But in those early years, when they were young men and the world was full of possibilities, those were clearly good years.

Watching them go to parties or dance at a wedding is delightful. 

You hear a tragic story and it’s just a statistic and you can forget about all the years of fun and joy there must of been before the game ended. And that people are more than their endings. 

So, I loved the first half of this even as you can sense just how badly this was all going to go.

The second half presents some surprises too. I thought something happened much earlier than it ended up, but it happens later and again there is a bit where some of them climb the mountain before the fall. 

No one should go to this movie looking for the true story of anything. The movie pretends one of the brothers just never existed and it condenses the timeline of at least one major event. 

Also, who knows if Fritz Von Erich deserves all the blame for how these things worked out. But a good story needs a good heel and Fritz was always a master of that role.

So Iron Claw is not factually true but it is emotionally true. It feels real in most of the ways it presents life in front of adoring crowds and behind the scenes. 

I have no idea if Fritz really was obsessed with the NWA belt, I suspect very little of that is true. The belt was just a macguffin for the fans that the wrestlers could use to separate them from their money. 

Money is what made the whole thing turn. 

And I say that, but then you watch interviews with Bret Hart (a champion from another famous wrestling family) and you can tell how much esteem he had for those titles even if it was the promoter and not the competition who put the belt on the wrestler.

The movie does the best it can but it also fails to really show how big those Texas crowds were. And Aaron Eisenberg tries hard but there is only one Ric Flair and anyone trying to do Ric Flair will always be a poor shadow of The Man. 

But Maura Tierney, Holt McCallany, Lily James and Jeremy Allan White all provide great supporting work and Zac Efron turns in a superb performance as the guy trying to hold it all together even when he’s falling apart.

When you see what happens to him … well,  the final card made me cry for five minutes. 

This is a perfect movie about families and tragedy and a little bit about wrestling. It’s a winner.