CHENNAI: “The Iron Claw,” penned and helmed by Sean Durkin, packs in all the excitement of a typical sports biopic, but some of the scenes in this wrestling tale are distressing and it is certainly not for the faint of heart. As with many films on this sport, the line between drama and distress is very thin.
Durkin’s creation hops across the rope and out of the ring and talks about the tragedy of a family after financial pressure and ruin. Based on the real story of the Von Erich family in the US, we see how the mighty Fritz (Holt McCallany) and his wife, Doris (Maura Tierney) began a tradition of wrestling that was carried forward by their sons. Interestingly, much like Durkin’s characters in his earlier tryst with cinema (“Martha Marcy May Marlene,” “The Nest”), those in “The Iron Claw” too have a doomed life. Durkin explores a family curse — a life of punishing hardship, injury in the ring and even fatalities.
Jack Adkisson, who goes by the wrestling persona Kevin Von Erich (Zac Efron), is Fritz’s second son and the only survivor among five brothers. The movie’s run time of slightly over two hours is filled with an overwhelming amount of grief, remorse and heart-rending tragedies. Durkin paints all this as part of the supposed curse in a film that sensitively explores mental health and paranoia in a predominantly male family.
The work is a classic example of toxic masculinity and may well be a critique of this — although the message is slightly unclear.
The cast is uniformly good and the performances are compelling to watch. However, character development left much to desired and the balance between historical facts and building up characters was a bit wobbly. What is more, the introduction of magic realism sticks out like a sore thumb.
