Ever since Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows, Beyond
the Mat and then Darren Aronofsky’s 2008 fictional drama The Wrestler,
the sports entertainment of professional wrestling has seen a serious-minded
closing in of the investigative magnifying glasses keen on conveying the human
stories behind the spectacle. And the
truth about what goes on behind the scenes in the professional wresting
business is often a lot harder and heavier than anything in the shows being put
on display. For every leap off the top
rope, every clothesline across the ring, every fall into the hard center of the
ring, audiences rarely ever see the hurt and/or anguish suffered by skilled athletic
performers punishing their own bodies for their art, until now.
Around 2019, the Canadian based Vice documentary television
series Dark Side of the Ring took off, focusing on darker chapters of
the wrestling business’ history featuring a variety of newly conducted
interviews with key members involved in the saga, archival footage and Errol
Morris styled re-enactments dramatizing the events being shared. In its very first season, on May 1, 2019, the
episode The Last of the Von Erichs aired chronicling the meteoric and
ultimately tragic rise and fall of the Von Erich professional wrestling family
dynasty. A story not wholly unlike the Hart
family involving a domineering wrestling family patriarch who steers his
children into the wrestling business fostering a championship, the saga of the
Von Erichs is mired in pain and sorrow and serves as a cautionary tale about how
an entire family can be destroyed by what they live for.
Zac Efron has undergone an
incredible top to bottom physical transformation with equally powerful physical
acting. Almost as powerful if not the
most striking presence in the film is Holt McCallany who has always been a bit
of a background character actor but here he attacks the role like a hungry
wolf, giving an unforgettable performance.
And of course Jeremy Allen White gives a low key powerful performance as
the troubled Kerry Von Erich who returns home to reunite with his family only
to suffer some of the worst blows of any of the ill fated wrestling brothers.
Currently in theatrical release from A24 The Iron Claw, though hampered by a less than stellar impression of Ric Flair mid-movie that almost took me out of it, is unquestionably the heaviest, most devastating film of 2023 second to Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (also coming from A24). Bold, brutal and somehow beautiful, this ensemble wrestling drama is one of the strongest dramas of the year that sheds further light on a wider stage the damage this family did to itself in striving for expressing their performance art in front of hundreds of spectators.
Given the
surviving Von Erich family members’ blessing, The Iron Claw is a captivating
and ultimately very sad yet urgent warning about how an entire family of
brothers can suffer unimaginable tragedy all for the course of an art form
bigger than themselves. If nothing else
see it for Efron and McCallany who are spectacular in this powerful, searing
drama that will leave you thinking hard about the sports entertainment business
you think you know and love.
--Andrew Kotwicki