(Sean Durkin, USA, 2023, rated R, 130 minutes)
"Now, we all know Kerry's my favorite, then Kev, then David, then Mike. But the rankings can always change."--Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany) to his sons
Part One: The Story of a Face
It's hard to talk about writer-director Sean Durkin's fact-based melodrama The Iron Claw without talking about Zac Efron, and not just because he plays the central character, former wrestling champion Kevin Adkisson, aka Kevin Von Erich, but because it isn't the kind of role he could've played, say, 10 years ago when he appeared in the hit frat-vs-dad comedy Neighbors.
Zac just doesn't look like that fresh-faced guy anymore, and not because he's 36 rather than 26--in The Iron Claw, he plays Kevin from his late-teens through his late-thirties--but because he looks like a different person.
When Zac first came to fame by way of The Disney Channel's 2006 millennial sensation High School Musical, he was about as pretty as a young man could get. It made him an instant teen idol. Zac capitalized on his success by appearing in two sequels, in addition to the 2007 version of the Broadway musical adaptation of John Waters' 1988 film Hairspray.
He could've kept going as a song and dance man, but decided to try other things instead; some worked, some didn't, but he was honing his chops.
In retrospect, it's too bad the coming-of-age dramas he made with Richard Linklater (Me and Orson Welles), Ramin Bahrani (At Any Price), and Lee Daniels (The Paperboy) didn't make more of a impact, or he might have continued in that vein, but instead, he gravitated toward mainstream comedies and romantic dramas. It's only in more recent years that he's appeared in slightly edgier material, like Harmony Korine's The Beach Bum.
Though Zac has worked steadily since 2002, when he was only 15, he was involved in an accident in 2013 that would change the course of his life. After a bad fall that, by his own account, left his chin literally hanging from his face, he had his jaw wired shut. The experience didn't alter his appearance at first. Through regular rehab, he could keep the damaged muscles in his face in alignment, but when he took an extended break in 2021, his jawline widened, permanently altering the shape of his face, and leading to speculation that he had had plastic surgery. He swears he hasn't, and I believe him, but he looks different. He's still a handsome man, but the prettiness is gone.
While watching The Iron Claw, it occurred to me that he's entered the post-1956 Montgomery Clift stage of his career. After the horrific accident in which Monty's famous face took the brunt of the impact, he had surgery that subtly, but significantly altered his appearance. Though plastic surgery wasn't as advanced in the 1950s, he appears to have had the very best.
It's often said that the accident robbed Monty of his looks, but this is cruel overstatement.
Even the Clash got in on the act with "The Right Profile" when Joe Strummer sang, "And everybody say, 'He sure looks funny--that's Montgomery Clift, honey'." Monty still looked good, but his matinee idol days came to a crashing halt, and though the films and roles grew smaller, he continued to do fine work. Eventually though, after years with a debilitating case of chronic colitis combined with the suffocations of the celluloid closet, the damage from self-medicating with alcohol and barbiturates took its toll.
Zac, on the other hand, may also look subtly, but significantly different, but he isn't going anywhere--not least because he's been sober since 2013, possibly as a result of the fall. It's just that there aren't likely to be as many pretty-boy roles in his future, which brings us to The Iron Claw in which he takes on his darkest, most devastating role to date.
If 2017's superfluous Baywatch introduced a super-fit, male model version of the svelte figure he had been before--much like Ryan Gosling's beach-ready body in Barbie--Zac is all muscle here, just as young Kevin Von Erich was all muscle (in 2020, Zac claimed he never wanted to work out like that again--"It's just stupid and it's not real"--and yet here we are). As far as I can tell, it's 100% Zac; no makeup effects, no prosthetics. It's a startling transformation. In combination with his changed face and shaggy hair, he's virtually unrecognizable, other than by those unmistakable blue eyes.
Part Two: The Family That Prays Together
In the prologue, a trim and effectively intimidating Holt McCallany (Mindhunter) plays Jack, patriarch of the Dallas-based Von Erich clan. He's a variant of the absolute beast Robert Duvall played in The Great Santini or maybe even Robert De Niro's "Shut your pie hole!" stepfather in A Boy's Life. Better known by his heel name, Fritz, he and his wife, Doris (Maura Tierney), have two boys, Kevin and David. From their father, they learn his signature move, The Iron Claw, which is every bit as injurious as it sounds.
The next time they appear, the family has expanded by two more sons, Mike and Kerry (Durkin omitted Chris, the youngest Von Erich). Fritz now works behind the scenes of World Class Championship Wrestling as owner and promoter, while Kevin and David (Scrapper's Harris Dickinson) have taken his place in the ring.
Except for the fact that their world revolves around wrestling, they're a typical Texas family in the 1970s: they own a ranch, their house is filled with guns, and their stay-at-home mom is a devout Christian. It isn't clear if the Von Erich menfolk share Doris's fervor, though it seems unlikely. When something goes wrong--like the accidental death of firstborn son Jack Jr. in 1959--she claims it was God's will, and when the boys seek her advice, she tells them to sort things out for themselves. It's the most downbeat performance I've seen the one-time Newsradio player give, and it will grow more downbeat over the course of the film.
A bright spot arrives in the form of Pam (Lily James, last seen playing Pamela Anderson in Pam & Tommy), who forthrightly and flirtatiously approaches Kevin after a match. The expectation: she's a groupie looking for a roll in the hay. Not exactly. Pam does everything in her power to get the sweet, if rather clueless grappler to ask her out. One date later, and they become inseparable. Durkin suggests that the Von Erich boys have been so indoctrinated by Fritz's macho bluster that they don't know how to have a normal conversation with a woman, especially one as outspoken as Pam. She's everything Doris isn't. (Even in the prologue, Doris comes across as a scold, chastising Fritz for buying a fancy car when their funds are tight.)
Durkin introduces the third brother, Mike (Angelfish's Stanley Simons), early on. To his father's chagrin, the rangy kid would prefer to make music than to wrestle, but he supports his brothers, and the feeling is mutual. At least 30 minutes pass before Durkin introduces the fourth brother, explaining that Kerry (The Bear's Jeremy Allen White, shorter than the rest, but just as buff), aka the future Texas Tornado, has been away at his father's alma mater, Southern Methodist University, where his expertise at discus-throwing lands him a berth on the Olympic team, but when the US boycotts the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Fritz talks him into joining Kevin and David in the ring where they become a formidable tag team, wrestling three opponents at the same time, bringing even more fame--if not always fortune--their way.
So far, so good, but then, after Durkin has fully defined the contours of the family's life and work, everything starts to go wrong, and no one has the power--or uses what power they have--to try to stem the tide. The idea of a Von Erich Curse takes hold, but not one of these tragedies was preordained.
In brief: David develops enteritis before a major Japanese match. Though Kevin urges him to see a specialist, David tells him he plans to wait until afterward. The boys have been taught to suck it up, and so David does what he has been told. We won't see him again.
With a second son down, Fritz convinces Mike to trade music for the mat; from his business-minded perspective, the boys are virtually interchangeable, but it works for awhile. Until it doesn't.
One injury later, and Mike is no longer able to wrestle. More critically, he isn't able to do much of anything, and though he shows signs of improvement, it isn't enough. He doesn't want to live like this, and so he finds a way out. Though Kerry, not Kevin, will bring home the American Heavyweight Champion belt Fritz was never able to secure himself, yet another injury will take him out of the ring. Against all odds, he finds a way to return. All the while, though, he's in excruciating pain, and turns to painkillers to cope. Soon he, too, will take himself out of the picture, leaving Kevin the last Von Erich male--next to his indestructible father, of course.
After the film ended, it occurred to me that this is a deeply odd motion picture to release during the holidays. The entire thing serves as a cautionary tale about masculinity and its discontents. Though Durkin concludes with an idyllic sequence, and though the inter-titles indicate the better times to come, I left with the overwhelming feeling that the Von Erich Curse was due more to poor parenting than to fate. Notably, Durkin didn't call on the real-life Kevin, now a 66-year-old grandfather, until well into production, but he's been supportive of the film, so it would appear that he doesn't dispute the representation of his parents. If anything, he says he was moved by the depiction of the closeness he and his brothers shared.
Part Three: Suicide is Painless (Not Really)
There are plenty of adults who grow up with shitty parents, and manage to survive and thrive. There are others who have the most loving parents imaginable, but it isn't enough when life feels like it's no longer worth living. There's no one reason people commit suicide any more than there is no one kind of person who sees death as the only solution to their ills. In the case of the three Von Erich brothers who took their lives--including the unseen Chris--they made their own decisions, but the film strongly suggests that they didn't have the means to cope when adversity came their way. Dad taught them to suck it up, Mom taught them that everything is God's will, and they grew up in an environment where therapy was for the weak. If The Iron Claw isn't an overtly political film, it's certainly not pro-gun. The principle of Chekhov's gun is in full effect: two brothers would die by self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Though it's beyond the scope of the film to explore copycat suicides--a real-world phenomenon that rattled Japan in the 1980s--it's hard not to imagine that the first Von Erich suicide in some awful way made the second and third possible. It's almost as if The Iron Claw is an uber-macho precursor to Jeffrey Eugenides' hyper-feminine novel The Virgin Suicides--the inspiration behind Sofia Coppola's directorial debut--in which every one of the beautiful, blonde Lisbon sisters takes her own life. Except that this all really happened.
Part Five: The Last Man Standing
In the end, Kevin escapes--and ostensibly ends--the so-called curse. He would follow his father as a behind-the-scenes wrestling magnate, while his sons would follow in their father and grandfather's footsteps as pro wrestlers. The film posits Pam as the primary factor that helped him to weather adversity, though it also presents him as the most stable Von Erich right from the jump. True or no, he's like a surrogate father in the film, since he settles down first and doesn't judge his brothers way his parents do when things go wrong.
Though the idea that the love of a good woman saving a man's life seems rather simplistic--and even conservative in ways that the rest of the film isn't--Kevin and Pam have now been married for 43 years, run a business together, and have managed to avoid the scandals that plagued his father's career, so it's hard to completely discount her influence.
Part Six: The Aftermath
Last week, Zac Efron was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and members of The Iron Claw cast came out to support him with Sean Durkin and Jeremy Allen White saying a few heartfelt words on his behalf.
Hollywood is powered by hot air, so I don't always know what to believe--as much as I like to think I'm pretty perceptive--but the person they described sounds a lot like film's Kevin Von Erich.
Zac, too, is a survivor, and reportedly a kind and decent person. He's also ridiculously privileged, but when a young, inexperienced kid finds themselves with boatloads of money: bad things can happen. Zac slipped and broke his face because he was running around in socks and collided with the granite fountain in his home. But he got sober with help from his friend and mentor Matthew Perry, who succumbed to drug addiction this October after years of trying to get clean (sadly, the ketamine overdose that claimed Perry's life was part of a therapy treatment gone wrong).
I watched Zac's Walk of Fame ceremony on YouTube because I wanted to see what he looks like now, long after filming has wrapped. His appearance in The Iron Claw is so unsettling--and frankly disturbing--that I worried he might still look like a Hulk-come-to-life. He doesn't. He's de-bulked, and he looks good. In fact, no one could stop talking about how good he looks.
I'm not sure whether he gives a great performance in the film, because Kevin is so recessive compared to his more extroverted brothers--David especially--but it's definitely a good one, and I feel certain that he's never brought more of himself to a role. So far, the film's biggest award has been for best ensemble, and despite Zac's shocking physical transformation, an Oscar nomination isn't guaranteed, but at least he's got a real shot.
At the press screening, my colleague, Silas Lindenstein, noted that The Iron Claw isn't really a wrestling movie, and he's right (he also complained that the film's Ric Flair doesn't begin to capture the actual flamboyant heel's charisma, and he's right there, too).
As Sean Durkin explains in the production notes, he grew up as a fan of the Von Erich brothers, so he brought that knowledge and enthusiasm to the project, and the wrestling scenes look sufficiently authentic--and viscerally painful in ways that recall Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler--but I believe it's the second half of the film, when things fall apart, that really drew him to the project.
Durkin's 2011 directorial debut, Martha Marcy May Marlene, which stars a very good, pre-MCU Elizabeth Olsen in her breakout role, also revolves around a survivor; in that case, a former cult member learning to function as an autonomous individual. The link between the two is clear: having to perform masculinity at all times in all situations and never showing any physical or emotional vulnerability is like being in a cult. It's also a curse that can infect--and in some cases destroy--most everyone that it touches.
For a more upbeat wrestling film, I recommend 2018's Fighting With My Family with Florence Pugh and Jack Lowden. The Iron Claw opens on Dec 21 at the Uptown and wide on Dec 22. Images from TV Guide (Zac Efron in The Iron Claw), Teen Vogue/Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection (Zac in High School Musical), Men's Health (Zac in Baywatch), The Hollywood Reporter (Zac with Harris Dickinson, Stanley Simons, and Jeremy Allen White), WrestleTalk (the Von Erich menfolk), Common Sense Media (Zac and Lily James), ABC7 Chicago/KABC (Zac with star), and Yahoo /Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images (Kevin and Pam at Zac's ceremony).
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