The Iron Claw

For the first half of its tale, The Iron Claw is the ultimate Dudes Rock movie. The Von Erich brothers Kevin (Zac Efron), Kerry (Jeremy Allen White), David (Harris Dickinson) and Mike (Stanley Simons) spend their days happily tumbling around their family home, pumping iron and playing football as they prepare to make their mark on the world of professional wrestling. Like Little Women but with great big men, the film perfectly captures the specific joys of a sibling bond. 

But their father (Holt McCallany) doesn’t just want his sons to be happy. He wants them to be great. He plays favourites to stoke competition and pushes them harder every day. In one training scene, he shows David how to properly perform his famous Iron Claw finishing move – crushing his son’s skull in his hand while bragging about how much pressure he can exert. One by one, this pressure slowly destroys each of his children. 

The Iron Claw succeeds, first as a heart-warming bromance and then as a gut-wrenching tragedy, largely thanks to the magnetic performances of the lead quartet. Efron is especially dazzling, managing to evince so much vulnerability and gentleness from such a hulking frame. He provides the movie with an emotional core that makes sure we feel the full force of every moment. 

Thanks to the cast’s stellar work and Sean Durkin’s own precise control of the film’s tone, The Iron Claw is a senton bomb of a movie – an exhilarating rise followed by the most devastating fall.

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Released 9 Feb by Lionsgate; certificate 15