The Iron Claw (2023)

 

Genre: Sports/ Thriller

Time: 2h 12mins

Director: Sean Durkin

Quick Summary: The true story of the inseparable Von Erich brothers, who made history in the intensely competitive world of professional wrestling in the early 1980s.

Me looking at Jeremy Allen White:

....smash

I feel like a mixed bag myself with my feelings towards this film. The first hour was pretty much a bore for me, as it was just wrestling and Zac Effron showing off his muscles (which to me are not appealing). There were some interesting bits during this that managed to keep my attention, but otherwise, this part felt a little empty to me. I'm not sure if it was because we had full attention on Zac Efforn, who actually, I felt was really wooden during this. Maybe that's how the guy was in real life, I have no clue there. 

Don't get me wrong though as this gets EMOTIONAL very quickly. A lot of tragedy happens to this family, and it never stops. It's honestly really horrible to think about when you realise how much grief and sadness they had all gone through, all for the sake of wrestling. In fact, this story is so sad, that I was told by my partner that they actually cut some of the sadness out because they worried the story at its full would be too upsetting. 

I don't think anyone was a bad actor in this, even if some were a little wooden. I realise that the characters felt a little one-note. You don't really get much from them besides their few character traits, even though this story is told over a couple of decades. As well, for a film that is focused on brotherly connection, I didn't really feel it until near the end. 

I will admit I did like how this looked. It wasn't stereotypical in your face 80s/90s. Random Pop culture things weren't thrown in your face to make you believe it was the set time. A lot of this goes down to the colour palette and graininess of the film. I mean, I think it was a great choice to have extremely bad haircuts like they would have been back then. 

Luckily, I am someone who likes to watch wrestling as there is a lot of screen time dedicated to it. You know it was pretty well choreographed as well. The fights were really tense and I loved a lot of the close-ups and references to stuff back then. I can imagine people who enjoy looking at extremely muscly men will really enjoy this. 

While this is extremely emotional (and I nearly cried), this lacks in a few places and chooses to focus on the wrong things at times. I'd still recommend this as this isn't bad at all, just a little disappointing. 

6/10

" Tonight, I walk with my brothers."