The Iron Claw (Sean Durkin, 2023)

[flyonthewall2983]

Sean Durkin’s next project is on the Von Erich (née Adkisson) pro wrestling family. For those who don’t know the story, it was featured on and maybe the best episode of Dark Side of the Ring. I got into wrestling just around the time Chris and Kerry died so I had a sense already of some of the more frankly near-macabre elements which are really just these inter-connected tragedies brought on by the physical tolls of the work they did, the emotional/mental/psychological ramifications of the job, and just how many drugs they could do to get through some of the more grueling schedules you had to drive in the territory days.

[flyonthewall2983]

Jeremy Allen White on The Iron Claw and it’s director Sean Durkin

“I was a fan of wrestling, but I didn’t know the story of the Von Erichs,” White said. “[Director] Sean did a beautiful job. He’s been a fan of wrestling and the Von Erichs since he was a kid, and so I feel like he understands the story so intimately that he had a really nice perspective on it.”

This could be an incredible allegory, for so much of the American character that is at our underbelly regarding family, faith and the invention or the commercialization essentially of the hard Right. What I’m sure it will really speak to is something I cannot even say. This story is a tragedy of enormous consequences that went beyond the deaths of David, Mike, Chris and Kerry. But that story itself is so powerful in the brotherly love they did have for each other, as it is tragic inherent of those young men taken from their family as well as the industry on happenstance responsible for the physical toll taken before drugs and intense bouts of grief while the company was being drained dry by Vince.

[flyonthewall2983]

Trailer

[flyonthewall2983]

I'm glad to see someone else feels this way. I pointed out earlier that there is enough backstage drama that's been going on in wrestling for years, that's all ripe for screen adaptation. My dream project would be to be able to tell the story of the Von Erich family, as it's both a bonafide American tragedy and a really fascinating narrative. This documentary does a really good job of painting the picture of what went on in the organization they helped build (and ultimately help destroy).

My other dream project would be to tell a heavily fictional (IE, names changed etc, etc) account of the Monday Night Wars and within that framework, try to put in as much of the backstage stuff that's happened since the 80's. My tongue-in-cheek pitch would be that it's a cross between Network and Gladiator.

Oh the folly of youth. With The Iron Claw coming out soon, reviews are starting to trickle out on Letterboxd. I took just a peek. I can’t think of a story in any walk of life in contemporary America of my generation I feel like I understand something more between the lines then this one. The issue of parental tyranny as tied to our national character is right at the nerve so much for me personally, and seemingly so on a more even level with the mainstream as this movie might attest to.

Judging from both the trailer and the entire omission of the youngest son from the plot, it seems to focus more on the time the territory was doing decent business before the aborted attempt at partnering with Minnesota and Memphis sank them into just being a local Texas promotion again the same time wrestling was now in the hands of just two men, McMahon and Turner.

[flyonthewall2983]

The Iron Claw

The matter of family in pro wrestling is as interwoven in the fabric of how these men live with what they do. Chosen family, anyway. Roddy Piper was a teenage delinquent in Canada surviving by his fists when he found the eventual refuge his parents had denied him. In his autobiography he recalls an incident in Miami where he is sitting on the roof of a hotel with Kerry Von Erich, talking about life and business. Brothers David and Mike already dead, and he was by then already suicidal even before the death of Chris later in ‘91. As Piper said in the book, the time on the roof was broken up by Curt Hennig and Ray Traylor who'd found them and invited them back inside.

This movie posed an interesting challenge to me having known the full extent of this particular American tragedy, to pull myself away from it a bit and consider the aspects of it only a movie can speak to. Enough stories for several movies could be made from what happened in that time in the 80’s, when masculinity national identity and conservatism were sowing the seeds of what is being reaped today. But this particular chapter, so incredibly dire from certain angles, is one I think should be told in a time like this when the fingers are still pointing and the voices still shouting.

Sean Durkin does an incredible balancing act of showing what made the Von Erich’s so successful on screen, but falling apart inside, with only seeming judgment for the family dynamic and not pro wrestling. For that part of it I appreciated the intensity of the in-ring stuff and the performances of the actors and wrestlers. Of the brothers themselves, compared to what I’d seen of them I think the one who played David got him the most. Efron is incredible here too, but not necessarily what I saw in Kevin in matches before.

The real mvp here is Holt McCallany, playing the father as incredibly gentle as I imagine you could bring out of a hard man like Jack Adkisson was. Reminds me of my grandfather really, someone perhaps too tall to see eye to eye with, scary but distant. That comes out in his portrayal of Fritz but in what are seeming increments compared to how else he could be played. Not a monster, but a man no less driven to succeed but without the hindsight to realize what’s falling apart behind him. An incredibly tragic performance.

[erok910]

Was a bit confused by this movie. Not that it should have been a masterwork or anything, but I thought it was exceptionally mediocre, maybe worse. For all of its drama, I figured it would have bit more flavor. it was way more straight laced than i expected, perhaps. It seems like a movie for wrestling fans, and I thought the drama unfortunately handled. There are a couple of moments I enjoyed, but I found it mostly to be on the nose and overwrought throughout. I know this sounds bad, but I mean it sincerely- I wish there was some sort of gimmick. It was an extremely average by the numbers biopic. And the decision to shy away from most of the deaths was curious in film making terms. I mean, yeah Holt McCallany is fine, as per usual. Zac Efron has a moment or two I found interesting, I suppose. jeremy Allen White as well, etc., etc. But I can't say I felt they were anything too special. Maura Tierney, Lily James- all of them formidable, but that's probably the problem I'm talking about. Everything is so oddly average, all I can say is that it's good for the people who got to make it.

Maybe would have been better to change the names and make it with all the dramatic liberties it may have deserved. Maybe I'm looking for something dark. But there seemed like there were so many moments that could have played out differently via editing for a more sensory experience that were abandoned for contrivances and cliches. Don't know much about the subject of them, but I know the drama was there (apparently) in the true story, and I really don't understand why the entire movie was handled in such a bland manner. It lacked the grit of something like The Wrestler, and didn't really prove a tone while it was around like Foxcatcher. I'm not too big of a fan of either of those films incidentally, and it's clear I'm using them on a surface level for an obvious comparison- but this movie really lacked bite, in my opinion. Then again, so did The Wrestler and Foxcatcher. Maybe they thought they could win Oscars. The above mentions of conservatism, larger metaphors or statements on masculinity: these things just aren't there. I'm not asking anything to be spelled out, but I think they're overwhelmingly incidental in their presentation (and in meaning) in my opinion. I think this movie had no interest in making any grand statement about anything at all. Maybe something with the Dad at the end, which I did like, when he said "You didn't take care of him!" I like everyone involved in the making of this as well, makes it all the more curious. Wondering if anyone else felt the same way? Really surprised how underwhelmed I was from this one. Apologies on vomited thoughts, and many apologies on any spelling and grammar- English is my second language.

[CSM126]

As a wrestling fan who knows the Von Erich story pretty well, I found this to be a Reader’s Digest piece at best. One son is omitted entirely and the movie just seems to skip from tragedy to tragedy without fleshing the story out very well. The problem is that the Von Erich saga is so complex and nuanced that it can’t easily be condensed into a movie. They tried but it doesn’t do justice to them. Watching this you’d think it was all just misery and death all the time, but the real tragedy was how many high points they achieved before the fall, and this film didn’t do a good job of playing that out. It lets things feel almost random at times.

The cast is great (aside from the horrendous Ric Flair impersonation - yikes!), but they have little to work with.