The Iron Claw

Director: Sean Durkin (USA, UK). Year of Release: 2023

An empty wrestling ring, the past (it must be, as everything’s filmed in black and white). The South’s finest, Fritz Von Erich, is fighting a home game in the Texas Sportatorium. There’s a lot of cheering and booing. The fight ebbs and flows. Fritz and his opponent throw each other about a bit. Suddenly, Fritz holds up his hand, fingers outstretched – the so-called Iron Claw – and pushes his extended hand deep into his opponent’s face. The bout is over.

After the fight, Fritz leaves the arena with his wife Doris and their two kids. As they approach the car park, Doris is dumbstruck, and not in a good way. What has Fritz done with their car? And what is that Cadillac attached to the motor home where they live? Fritz explains that to succeed in wrestling you need to be the best. And he very much intends to succeed. He will later tell his kids that if they are the toughest and the strongest, nothing could ever hurt them.

Suddenly we’re in 1980, and Fritz’s sons have taken over his wrestling mantle while he stays in the office counting the money. For the time being only Kevin and David are wrestling. Kerry is a discus player destined for the Olympics and Mike, the sensitive one, prefers to spend time with his band. A group of violent brothers who know one day that their younger brother Michael will enter their line of work? The Corleones should sue.

One by one, we meet the brothers. Kevin suffers from “older brother syndrome”, although technically speaking he’s the second oldest. His elder brother died when he was 5. Outside a fight, when he’s signing autographs, he is picked up by Pam, a fan. He is flustered and doesn’t know what to say to her, but she does enough talking for the both of them. Later on, she’ll be the first woman he sleeps with, and even later, his wife. She is a calming influence to a clearly troubled man.

David is less of a natural fighter than his brother but a much better showman. After a fight, Kevin wins, but is too winded to talk to the audience. David grabs the mic, and shows a natural rapport and ability to trashtalk. Later on, after Kevin has been denied the chance to fight for the world (ie US) heavyweight crown, David is offered a bout with the title holder. You get the feeling that the match organisers realise that David is much better box office. Kevin looks completely deflated.

As said, Kerry first tries to make his way as a discus thrower, but when Jimmy Carter cancels the 1980 Olympics for US athletes, Fritz orders him to join his brothers in the ring. Kerry agrees immediately. While the actor playing Kerry has some muscles, he looks out of place next to the others, especially as he is several inches shorter. Kerry enjoys riding motorbikes and drinking more beer than he really should, which foreshadows an important plot point later on.

Mike is the youngest, the one who everyone (except Fritz) wants to look after. He has no place in the power structures built by his father, and would much rather play guitar in his band (even though Doris forbids him from playing the local University). But paternal pressure means that Mike also spends some time in the ring. None of the sons is able to gain recognition from their father if they don’t at least try to win the national wrestling title which always eluded him.

Perhaps the most telling scene is the one where Fritz says: “Now we all know that Kerry’s my favourite. Then Kev, then David, then Mike. But the rankings can always change.” The boys are encouraged to compete against each other to win their father’s favour. For some, this works easier than for others. But in all cases, the father’s insecurities contribute towards stunting the lives of his sons.

Early on, the film acknowledges, and challenges, the idea that wrestling is all about deception. We see backstage scenes where the brothers collude with their opponents about who should make which move on whom. And yet at the same time, Kevin assures Pam that it’s all deadly serious. You only get a chance of a top fight based on how your small-time fights go – how you land, and how the audience reacts. Yes, it is all fabricated, but under some very precise conditions.

To an extent, the film is about the Von Erich curse, something in which Kevin believes intensely, although Pam constantly tells him that it’s all nonsense. When he became a professional wrestler, Fritz changed his name from Jack Barton Adkisson. As the film proceeds, each family member experiences their own personal catastrophe. While the film does not endorse the idea that there was any curse, it uses these tragedies to increase dramatic tension.

Kevin is the family member who is the least directly affected by the curse, but the most sensitive to it. When he has a son, he pointedly registers him with the surname Adkisson. This is a passing moment in a film which does not put undue attention on this as an overly dramatic moments, but it is none the worse for that. Kevin is a normal man trying to make sense of an extraordinary life in a family which suffers more calamities than most.

The film does not always show such restraint. Towards the end, it gets unduly sentimental, not least in a scene where dead family members reunite. For most of the time, there is too much emphasis on the redemptive aspects of family. And yet we also experience a strong undercurrent showing that Philip Larkin was probably right about your mum and dad. Families? You can’t live with them? You can’t live without them? What are you going to do?

This is not a film which goes as deep as “The Wrestler”, where Mickey Rourke’s has-been fighter hits the depths, where he seeks some sort of redemption. The Iron Claw is much more of a standard biopic. We are expected to identify with the main characters without spending much time questioning their motivation. Kevin is a terrible father, but we’re asked to understand as he’s under a lot of pressure. Similarly, Fritz is from “a time when such behaviour was acceptable”.

By the way. it is an ironic side point that the National Wrestling Association, the NWA, is the whitest organisation you’d care to imagine. We’ve been watching at least an hour before any BIPoC wrestler (or indeed character) appears on screen. Maybe it’s a Southern thing, maybe I’m more amused than most about the contrast with the other NWA. Don’t worry about it, I thought it was funny, at least.