I love sports stories although I’m not a huge sports fan and I am enjoying how feature films, documentaries and other media are exploring sports stories in different ways.
It’s about the short reign of the Von Erich family and they’re so-called curse. The patriarch, Fritz, put a lot of pressure on his sons to be successful pro-wrestlers, so much so that they either gave up on or delayed their own pursuits of happiness. Surprisingly, within that storyline, Fritz wasn’t depicted negatively as an antagonist. The movie doesn’t cover everything exactly as it happened to this real-life family. For example, some characters were left out or multiple characters were rolled into one. But the film does a great job of artistically interpreting the broad strokes of their story.
I really liked how emotions of the characters were explored and how their struggles were depicted. I enjoyed the use of super close-up cameras in action scenes so you got to focus on the characters emotionally while the very physical wrestling was happening. I was moved by the acting of Zac Efron. And ever since I started watching Shameless, I’ve enjoyed seeing Jeremy Allen White on the screen. I could definitely watch Iron Claw again.
I followed Iron Claw with Vice’s Dark Side of the Ring, season 1 episode 4, The Last of the Von Erichs, for a dose of the truth. It was helpful and filled in some of the questions that came up for me in the film. I feel like that’s a good double-feature if you’re going to watch Iron Claw.
Character-driven • Emotionally Intense
I streamed Iron Claw on Max and Dark Side of the Ring on Hulu.
