“If we’re the toughest, the strongest, the absolute best, the most successful, nothing can ever hurt us.” Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany) says a variation of this line a few times in The Iron Claw, a true-story film about the Von Erich family professional wrestling dynasty in the 1980s and early ’90s. Fritz is trying to instill in his sons an ethos of ruthless achievement and toughness he believes will be essential to their success in the sport.
The line is tragically ironic. As much as the Von Erich brothers come close to the “toughest, strongest, most successful” superlatives in pro wrestling—in 2009 they were inducted into the WWE hall of fame—their dad’s promised result (“Nothing can ever hurt us”) proved painfully false. Before, during, and after their wrestling heyday, tragedy struck the family with startling, almost Job-like persistence. Clearly, success and fame provide no immunity to suffering.
Directed by Sean Durkin, The Iron Claw is far more than just a wrestling movie. I convinced my reluctant wife to see it with me, and she was blown away. The extremely well-acted film chronicles the suffering that follows the Von Erich family (real surname: Adkisson) like a curse. It’s a gritty and often bleak film (rated R) but also powerfully redemptive. On one level a cautionary tale about the cost of athletic ambition, greed, addiction, and self-glory, the film’s deeper layers contain sobering insights about fatherhood and the ways a dad’s decisions and behavior can set his family on a course toward either life or death.
Public Strength, Private Pain
The world of professional wrestling is all about image, persona, and presenting superhuman strength and machismo. With steroid-enabled physiques and intimidating trademark moves (e.g., the “iron claw” invented by Fritz and carried on by his sons), these athletes are like chiseled, mythological Greek gods. But outside the ring, their private lives often more resemble Greek tragedies.
That dichotomy is on clear display in The Iron Claw, where the wrestler’s mantra seems to echo what Ric Flair (Aaron Dean Eisenberg) pronounces at one point: “If you’re a real man you never go down. You just stay up!” But that performative vision of manhood hardly matches reality, where the real lives of wrestlers are full of addiction, depression, divorce, and other demons.
In Claw, Durkin isn’t just observing an obvious point about the dualities at play in a performative culture (see also: Instagram influencing). He’s challenging audiences to beware the toxic tendency to stake one’s identity on something as fragile as a “performed self,” where the volatile tastes of a fickle audience can become a ruthless, unappeasable master.
In addition to this modern tragedy of succumbing to the pressures of public perception, the Von Erich story is decidedly a tragedy of fatherly failure. Fritz is positioned as the film’s villain, though his depiction is contested by at least one family member. Though a churchgoing “Sunday Christian” in the film, Fritz lives in a graceless manner that sidelines the gospel. He detests neediness and weakness and preaches an essentially Nietzschean message of will to power.
He comes across as a greedy dad who sees his sons as means to a larger desired end: wrestling glory and the fortune that might come with it. He cultivates rivalry among his boys by saying things like this: “Everyone knows Kerry is my favorite, followed by Kevin, then David and Mike. But the rankings can change.” When the collateral damage of his hard-driving ways begins to mount, he merely pushes the other boys to strive harder.
Foolish Man
The Iron Claw reminded me on more than one occasion of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. Both films follow Christian families in midcentury Texas as they deal with immense suffering, conflicted relationships with strict fathers, and the irreplaceable bonds of brotherhood. A scene near the end of Claw features a familial embrace that felt like an overt nod to memorable group hugs in the finale of Life.
The dual influences of Christianity (grace) and dog-eat-dog ambition (nature) that shape the O’Brien brothers in Life are also at work in the Von Erich household. Early in Claw, we hear narrator and central protagonist Kevin (Zac Efron, in a remarkable performance) describe this duality in terms of his mother’s and father’s influences: “Mom tried to protect us with God. Dad tried to protect us with wrestling.” But where in Life suffering leads the family’s patriarch (played by Brad Pitt) to humbly acknowledge his weakness and the error of his pride (“I wanted to be loved cause I was great, a Big Man. Now I’m nothing . . . a foolish man”), no such reckoning occurs for Fritz in Claw.
Even though the suffering inflicted on Fritz is unfathomable (five of his six sons precede him in death, and three by suicide), he’s unwilling to let it chasten him. He refuses to admit any personal folly that might have factored into his family’s ruin. Whatever pain he feels as he buries his sons, one by one, he suppresses completely.
At one of the son’s funerals, he instructs the other boys that they dare not shed tears for their dead brother. Instead of acknowledging the normal realities of weakness and limitation, and embracing his sons amid pain, he models an impenetrable, ironclad masculinity that’s more than toxic; it’s literally deadly.
Missing the Glory
At the point in Malick’s Tree of Life when Brad Pitt’s father character finally breaks his exterior façade, he confesses that part of his folly was a misplaced understanding of glory. He’d focused too much on his own glory and “didn’t notice the glory” all around him (as he says these words, Malick turns the camera on Pitt’s on-screen wife, played by Jessica Chastain, as well as their sons).
Fritz models an impenetrable, ironclad masculinity that’s more than toxic; it’s literally deadly.
This is a realization every father should come to before it’s too late. The “glory” of leading a home isn’t about material success, net worth, trophy cases, or some other external achievement. It’s found in the quieter, more private commitments within the family itself: fidelity and love to one’s wife, secure love and provision for one’s children.
God’s glory is on display in a healthy family where love in every direction is selfless and not contingent on earning or “getting something” out of the relationship. In Claw, Fritz’s “love” for his sons is tied up with their contributions to the overarching goal of the family claiming a heavyweight championship belt. The Von Erich boys must fight hard to earn Fritz’s favor, and the burden is crushing.
More Fruitful Legacy
One of the more powerful and hopeful moments in Claw comes in the final moments, as we see a photograph of the actual Kevin Adkisson with his wife, four kids, and many grandkids. It’s a picture of a better family legacy: not trophies, championship belts, or the accoutrements of success that quickly fade but rather the loving web of lives that have come to be as a result of Kevin’s choice to be a faithful husband, father, and grandfather. That’s where the true family glory resides (Eph. 5:25–27; Ps. 127:3; Prov. 17:6).
God’s glory is on display in a healthy family where love in every direction is selfless and not contingent on earning or ‘getting something’ out of the relationship.
Where Fritz leaves a trail of ruin because he seemingly prioritized wrestling glory as his family’s legacy, Kevin sees that a healthy family is the more important legacy.
As a tale of father and sons, The Iron Claw would be utterly bleak if not for the way Kevin represents the hope of charting a better course. It’s a reminder that fatherly failure in one generation doesn’t guarantee failure in the next, just as a father’s bad example in one season doesn’t preclude him from modeling godliness in another. Through repentance, the gospel of grace, and the transformative power of the Holy Spirit, every father and son can learn, grow, and love in healthier ways than were modeled for him—or by him—before.
The Gospel Coalition