THE IRON CLAW

A fascinating Greek tragedy that is elevated by excellent performances, The Iron Claw keeps you gripped for over two hours in a cautionary tale about toxic masculinity in a wrestling family.

Movies can do odd things to you. While watching The Iron Claw, a movie filled with testosterone and nary a strong female character of note, I somehow kept being reminded of The Virgin Suicides. After all, as in the Sofia Coppola film, here impending, irrational doom builds into a cumulation of personal tragedy that is not easily explained but leaves a lasting impression.

The picture tells the true tale of the Von Erich family, a wrestling dynasty of one domineering father and four sons eager to fulfil their dad’s dream of reaching the sport’s summit. As one by one they step into the ring to claim glory, they somehow cannot run from immeasurable tragedy along the way.

The Iron Claw is a direct descendant of the plays the Greeks put on the stage over two millennia ago. Writer-director Sean Durkin crafts a familiar tale about the impossibility of escaping your fate, but also adds fascinating insight into problematic family dynamics, with a particular focus on the poisonous ambition a father channels through his sons.

Durkins propulsive, brash direction and a screenplay that finds a great mix between entertaining drama and psychological complexity already are major assets, but it’s the cast that lingers the longest in the mind. From a never-better Zac Efron to The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White and particularly veteran supporting player Holt McCallany as the Von Erich patriarch, the actors deliver electric performances.

The only things preventing The Iron Claw from surging even higher are the relative predictability of the narrative and a sequence just past the halfway point where a flurry of tragedies befalling the central family stretch plausibility to its breaking point, but otherwise this is one of the best sports films I’ve seen in recent times and one of the better movies of the year so far.

release: 2023

director: Sean Durkin

starring: Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Holt McCallany, Lily James