The MontyVerse

For much of my life, I was never a big wrestling fan. I knew what it was, and I could identify some of the bigger names that crossed over into the larger cultural media landscape (The Rock! Hulk Hogan! John Cena!), yet I never gave it a chance and see if I actually would enjoy it.  Sports have never really been my thing. But through various means, I started to get introduced to concepts that professional wrestling adhered to, such as heels and babyfaces, and the blurring of fiction and reality both in the ring and outside of it. As a lover of stories and the various ways they could be told, these ideas slowly drew me in, until the massive premium event known around the world as WWE’s 2023 Royal Rumble fully grabbed me. In less than a year, I’ve morphed into a full-fledged fan. 

I was never big on sports, but this isn’t sports; it’s sports entertainment.

This preface is to provide a frame of reference for how my knowledge and experience with this industry is simultaneously both lacking while setting me up as a mark, easily drawn into the stories of wrestling’s past and the people who built it up as the massive entertainment industry it is today. It’s an industry that exists thanks to the numerous stories of so many men and women, so many of which have had to deal with the peaks and valleys of what we know as a traditional “rise and fall” narrative. Many legends have spent decades working to entertain their audience, sacrificing their bodies and health for love of the game. 

However, there is also a darker side of the ring as well. (Credit to Jason Eisner and co. for the ongoing documentary series detailing these more harrowing chapters in wrestling’s history.)  For as many stories of hope and joy wrestling has brought to the masses, there are several tales of tragedy and pain across the years as well. As a new fan, the closest I’ve come to experiencing one of these is with the loss of Bray Wyatt, the WWE Superstar who passed away in August. It hit me in a way I didn’t expect, as his last match he ever fought in was in the event that made me a fan today.

This was a long-winded way of saying that I was unfamiliar with the story of the Von Erich family, told in exciting and gut wrenching detail by writer/director Sean Durkin in A24’s The Iron Claw. The title, taken from the family’s famous finisher move, is an apt title, as this film feels like it’s taken its hand and wrapped its fingers tightly around my head and crushed down until I had no choice but to submit. Of the multiple Von Erich brothers that populated the ring, only one is still alive today. It’s a story that, were it a fictional idea, would be too bizarre and intentionally painful to believe, yet knowing this really happened turns it into a work of near-Shakespearean tragedy.

Fritz Von Erich (a sturdy Holt McCallany) was a professional wrestler who believed that if he ever attained the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, he would financially secure his family for life. He never won that title. Over the years, Fritz would push his four sons (Kevin, Kerry, David, and Mike) to succeed in the ring where he could not, ignoring almost all sense of parental duties and emotional comfort a parent should provide to his boys. This is a man who would look his children in the eye and tell them his rankings of them based on how much he liked them. Suffice it to say, he was a real piece of work.

Most of the Von Erichs feel like a fairly shallow construction of who they were as people, but it’s entirely believable that they were forced into a life free of much depth due to how Fritz’s influence shaped them. Harris Dickinson makes the most of his limited screen time as David, infusing the film with a level of charisma unmatched by his brothers. Mike, played by relative unknown Stanley Simons, is a boy who clearly doesn’t have the same talent or yearning to wrestle, yet forced into the sport by his single-minded father. Maura Tierney takes what could be on paper as a belabored wife/mother character and conveys such a mounting level of pain over the course of the runtime that she nearly runs away with the whole film. There’s a moment in the film that, thanks to the subtlety in Tierney’s delivery and the empathy of Durkin’s direction, cuts so deeply that it’s hard to shake.

Jeremy Allen White, known to some as Lip from Shameless but to most as Carmy from Hulu’s extraordinary series The Bear, has to leverage his talent for drama with a physicality previously unseen in his other works as Kerry. Kerry’s life seems to be defined not by what he’s been able to accomplish, but by the almost comical number of times he almost succeeds. He was going to the Olympics, until he couldn’t. He was going to be the reigning NWA Heavyweight Champion, until he couldn’t. He was going to ride his motorcycle, until he couldn’t. He was going to live a long, healthy life alongside his remaining loved ones, until he couldn’t. White brings a pride and progressive exhaustion to the part that’s as sad as it is sympathetic.

And then there’s Zac Efron, the singing and dancing pretty boy many fell in love with thanks to the High School Musical films. This man has spent his career all over the place, hitting the requisite beats that many young actors follow in their burgeoning ​​résumés with romantic dramas and youth-targeted comedies before trying to branch out into more adult ventures.  Suffice it to say, his work has been pretty hit-or-miss.  And yet, Efron always brings his full game to whatever role he’s given, regardless of how thankless or shallow it may be.  Thanks to films like Neighbors and Me & Orson Welles, we know he takes his craft as seriously as his workout regimen.  

Kevin Von Erich was the First Son, the one tasked with leading the family to the heavyweight championship, and thus saddled with the responsibility of securing their future.  When he misses his opportunity, it crushes him.  He’s so focused on this one goal, driven deep into his skull by his single-minded father, that it’s hard to imagine not being the one to bring home the gold. Yet it’s his love for his brothers, and the chemistry he shares with them, that keeps him moving forward. The only thing he may have loved almost as much as his brothers is Pam (Lily James), a young woman whose interest in him helps open him up emotionally in ways his parents had failed to do so.

Efron is nearly unrecognizable here, a mass of muscle and gentle innocence underneath a terrible hairstyle that would feel reductive to characterize as “big man has feelings.”  You’re with him every step of the way here, through the more recognizable rise and fall story threads, rarely leaving his side as he experiences loss after loss, both in his career and in his family. He believes his family may be cursed well before the tragedies start to mount, and this is his story of how wrestling may not only be the cause of it, but perhaps how the only way to secure his family’s future may be to get as far away from his father’s dream as possible.  

If there are any issues I have with the film, it may be that it deifies them a bit too much. These men are victims of their father’s upbringing, but it does feel like we could have gotten to know some of these brothers a bit more than what we were given. Additionally, as much as we are normally used to biopics moving history around and combining characters for the sake of pace and cinematic narrative, it’s kind of wild that there’s an entire other Von Erich brother who also had a tragic ending that the film just completely omits, combining elements of his story with Kerry’s. I understand why it was done, but it’s not something I necessarily agree with.

While the film itself is fairly straightforward, it’s a testament to Durkin’s skill as a director, both in his handling of various tones and with his cast, that it works as well as it does. Efron’s extraordinary work here (especially in one scene near the end that functions purely on emotion rather than logic) cements this as the best performance of his career, a heavyweight contender in any other year that I would have gladly supported.  The Iron Claw may not be the best film of the year, but it is one of my favorites.