‘The Iron Claw’ Wrestles With Its Own Emptiness
A soulful central performance by Zac Efron can't fill the dead air otherwise wafting through "The Iron Claw."
Sean Durkin frequently frames the action in The Iron Claw within another frame in the dead center of the screen. Whether it’s tumult inside the wrestling ring, or family drama within the confines of a modest suburban bedroom, the director, teaming again with cinematographer Mátyás Erdély (who shot Durkin’s feature debut The Nest), punctuates or punches up emotions by boxing the characters between four sharp corners.
When Zac Efron, starring as real-life wrestler Kevin Von Erich, holds that center square, the movie pulsates with some purpose. But outside the box, there’s often very little happening.
In the small but significant spaces between big moments, the movie is missing the rattle and hum of action in the background or off to the sides, the world-building details that paint the margins of a Paul Thomas Anderson or Robert Altman movie.
Beyond the center of The Iron Claw, the world seems dormant, animated only when and where the main characters exist. Beefed up, bronzed, and wigged out like a ’70s stand-in for Lou Ferrigno, Efron supplies most of that main character energy.
He also offers a bruising yet vulnerable take on the most dutiful bro of the four-brother Von Erich brood, who, coached by hard-ass patriarch Fritz (Holt McCallany), grappled their way to the top of the sport and eventually pro wrestling’s Hall of Fame.
McCallany matches Efron’s intensity, making Fritz a teddy bear of a dad, if that teddy bear were stitched with barbed wire. Both he and wife Doris (Maura Tierney) adamantly handle their sons’ sensitivities and feelings with chilly remove.
Desperate then to win a show of his dad’s approval, Kevin breaks his body and heart to follow the path Fritz wants, to meet the goals Fritz sets, to marry the woman Fritz gives the okay.
Kevin’s dogged determination to please his dad, while succeeding in the ring, poses the film’s only real line of interest.
Yes, there are three other Von Erich brothers — Kerry (Jeremy Allen White), the prospective Olympic champ-in-training; David (Harris Dickinson), the prospective pro-champ-in-waiting; and Mike (Stanley Simons), considered the artsy runt of the litter.
Kerry and David are meant to be fearsome phenoms, but, between the Drama Club wigs, low-energy performances, and distinctly unexciting fight choreography, White and Dickinson just appear to be cosplaying wrestling badasses.
Whatever is the opposite of pulsating with purpose — floundering with futility — might best describe the spirit evoked by Dickinson’s David and White’s Kerry, who endure a sports drama checklist of tragedies and still don’t spark much interest.
Sparks do fly in the film’s generally fun, classic rock-spinning glimpses into the wild, wacky world of early ’80s pro wrestling, a bastion of all-American machismo captured in the display of flags, guns, and trophies at the Von Erich home.
One sharply edited sequence hyping a title match against Ric Flair, portrayed with flair by Aaron Dean Eisenberg, and a hilariously cheesy promo for super-serious champ Harley Race (Kevin Anton) hint at a looser, livelier version of The Iron Claw, where life would fill the entire screen, not just one center square.
The Iron Claw (★★☆☆☆) is playing in theaters nationwide. Visit www.fandango.com.
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