The Iron Claw review – bulked-up Zac Efron amazing sight in tragic wrestling drama

Efron, Jeremy Allen White and Harris Dickinson play the Von Erich brothers, the wrestling superstars who were battered by trauma, in and out of the ring

The tragicomic spectacle of American wrestling, with all its poignant pantomime machismo and showbiz fury, is the subject of Sean Durkin’s deeply sad, odd true-life drama based on the case of the Von Erich family – like the Von Trapp family, only with a ’roid rage death wish.

The Von Erichs were a professional wrestling dynasty from Texas in the 1980s; giant boys in wrestling boots and trunks and their taskmaster patriarch-manager. The old man was embittered and fanatically energised on his sons’ behalf in time-honoured fashion by his own failure to win glory as a young contender. As a result of his brutally dysfunctional parenting and toxic masculinity, the Von Erichs were plagued by a succession of heartbreaking calamities. Maybe this film will come to be shown as a double bill with Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, although the ordeal here is broadly factual.