The Iron Claw

It's also a film about family and masculinity in which the beatings in the ring are pretty much nothing compared by the beatings that are dished out at the dinner table...

The Iron Claw looks and feels like a prestreaming TV movie – and not just any old TV movie but a strangely entertaining, darkly tragic, completely gripping TV movie.


Efron is an underrated actor, and this is a star-making performance.

Efron, White, Dickinson and Simons render grief in all its shades. But it’s Efron, his outrageously muscled body made beatific with a Joan of Arc bowl cut, who softens the film’s harder knocks with a performance of disarming tenderness.

The film’s sensitive portrait of fraternal love is a match for modern classics Rain Man, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape or A River Runs Through It.

In a way, the director's exclusion of the sixth brother is indicative of the film's uncertainty... It places an artful premium on their cosmically cruel suffering, and can't even house the unadorned facts inside a structure that works.

There was a great film to be made here about sport and male mental health, but while the opening packs a punch, the limp conclusion is far from heavyweight.

Because everyone in the film is an archetype and not a real person, the intended emotions never connect.

Memorable performances are aplenty in The Iron Claw, Sean Durkin’s remarkable retelling of the von Erich family story.

The Iron Claw is exquisite human drama, plain and simple.