last year when the 96th Academy Awards were in full swing and everyone was furious about who didn’t get nominated (see: Margot Robbie and Greta Lee for Best Actress, Charles Melton for Best ing Actor, Leonardo DiCaprio for Best Actor, and so on and so forth)? Indeed, it’s almost like there’s only so many nomination spots available, and so great artists and films will ultimately have to miss the cut for the sake of other great artists and films.
In any case, the single most painful example of this unavoidable tragedy is The Iron Claw, the Sean Durkin-masterminded, A24-distributed biopic that would have granted Zac Efron a rightfully-deserved Best Actor win in a more just world. For now, though, it’s settling for come hearty streaming success.
Per FlixPatrol, The Iron Claw is clawing its way up the Max charts in the United States at the time of writing, settling itself in at seventh place while the likes of Megamind (eighth place), Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (third place), and The Hangover (10th place) offer up some thoroughly idiosyncratic company for this pulverizingly devastating sports drama.
The Iron Claw stars Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, and Stanley Simons as Kevin, Kerry, David, and Mike Von Erich; four brothers and the son of wrestling legend Fritz Von Erich, whose failure to secure the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship during his career has culminated in overbearing pressure on his sons to accomplish what he couldn’t. Desperate to win their father’s love, the boys step into the ring as the next generation of the Von Erich dynasty, having no way of anticipating the influx of tragedy that will soon descend upon them.
One may declare that the special sauce of The Iron Claw lies quite simply in its no-holds-barred robustness towards its artistic fundamentals. They would be mostly correct in doing so; the directing, writing, and acting are all masterful, and the added touch of having the actors perform the wrestling stunts themselves adds a sharp injection of kinetic realism that supplements the film’s honesty tenfold.
That said, all the creative competence in the world will only take you so far without a good story, but The Iron Claw soars in that department as well. Armed with the wisdom to sand down historical accuracy for the sake of building its emotional core, The Iron Claw paints one of the most sobering portraits of masculinity ever put to screen, rooting all of these brothers in the purest, most natural love before teeing them up against an apathetic world that no one prepared them for.
Those of you already familiar with the history of the Von Erichs know better than to expect a happy ending here, but we can’t underestimate the necessity of such sad stories. Honest emotional ruin plays a key role in our duty of accessing the breadth of our humanity, and few films from the last year invoke such a thing like The Iron Claw does. Have two boxes of tissues ready; one for the film as a whole, and one specifically for the afterlife scene.
Published: Jan 1, 2025 02:39 pm