My first memory of professional wrestling is when my uncle ordered (then) WWF SummerSlam ’91 on pay-per-view. It was billed as “A Match Made In Heaven and a Match Made In Hell,” a little intense for a small kid on both fronts, but you go with it. On the same show, you had a wedding between the late Macho Man Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth, a match where somebody had to spend the night in a New York prison, and a team of Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior facing off against Gulf War evil characters of Sgt. Slaughter, Col. Mustafa (The Iron Sheik), and Gen. Adnan.
It’s a massive ask on your suspension of disbelief. Young Murjani didn’t know the huge implications of a wedding or that Randy and Elizabeth were once a real-life couple, but that’s the beauty and the art of wrestling. The collection of men and women fit seamlessly into these characters to the point where you believe someone like The Undertaker is damn near impervious to pain and can be revived by the late great Paul Bearer’s beckoning to a gold urn.
It’s Hollywood on a 52-week basis but at a significant cost. Imagine doing something exceptionally physically demanding for more than 200 days a year. Birthdays and anniversaries get missed, the wear and tear on the body, and battling the constant notion of what you do not being of any valid substance. The longing belief is that this is nothing but theater because the moves are choreographed, and the results are predetermined. In those terms of thinking, Hollywood and wrestling would be a match made in heaven. However, the stigma of portraying a fantastical vision of an athletic soap opera in a tangible three-act dramatization still has a distance between it — even considering Darren Aronofsky’s 2008 opus, The Wrestler. It’s a fictional account of a man at the end of his career, caught in limbo chasing the cheers of the hometown crowd, the damage of what it takes to gain them, and the life that has perhaps left him behind.
Every wrestling fan has experienced their collective share of tragedy as a shock to the system. For some, it was the deaths of Owen Hart and Eddie Guerrero or the horrible murder/suicide of Chris Benoit. Going back even further was the never-ending tragedy that fell upon the Von Erich family. This was already a monumental task given Vice TV’s Dark Side of the Ring episode, where the surviving brother, Kevin, provides a first-hand account of how it affected him. An adaptation on the big screen can’t simply retrace those steps.
Sean Durkin’s The Iron Claw takes you to hotly contested and emotionally charged nights at the Dallas Sportatorium, where these brothers were Texas’s wrestling heart and pride. Living up to those expectations is hard enough. Add the continued insistence at their father’s behest, Fritz Von Erich, to take the “family prize” of the NWA championship as something stolen from them, and you have a powder keg ready to explode. What do you mean? It’s a piece of gold. Why is something like this so important?
At one point in the film, Kerry (Jeremy Allen White) sits in the dark in his parents’ kitchen with the NWA title on the table as his prize after the Festival of Champions. When Kevin (Zac Efron) walks it, Durkin shows two contrasting feelings mired by separate feelings of despair. Together, they are trying to contend with the grief of losing their brother David (Harris Dickinson). Kerry cannot cope with the high of that moment, and much of Durkin’s subjects of his storyline show how that ends up completely derailing him physically and mentally. Soon after, the motorcycle accident takes his foot and thus leads him into a cycle of drug abuse, resulting in his suicide later in the third act — identical to how his real life ended. Mike’s (Stanley Simons) story continues to depict what this brand of physicality can take away from you. He attempted a simple dropkick, injured his shoulder, and was never the same afterward.
After Kerry leaves, Kevin sits in a chair, turned away from the title. It’s almost as if it foreshadows what this pursuit will take away from him and the Von Erich family. At the beginning of The Iron Claw, Kevin’s journey as the older brother is a protector, but also to be the first to obtain his father’s dream. As the film progresses and he starts having these other life experiences, Kevin gets a clearer picture of the cost. He slowly but surely loses his grip on his immediate family, but in letting it go, he regains the one he starts with his wife Pam (Lily James) and his two sons.
Wrestling is a world that pulls you in and wows you if you allow it. If that sounds like film, it’s precisely the synergy both mediums share. But like where famed actors and actresses disrobe their roles and deal with life’s ebbs and flows, so do the performers who go around various cities all days of the week, making thousands of fans believe that the impossible can occur within a four-sided ring. The Iron Claw might not change everyone’s mind on the medium itself. Despite this, it may serve as a mode of understanding that broken bones, dreams, and strife exist beyond the costumes, inspired promos, and pyro-infused celebrations.