Review of Sean Durkin’s drama “Full Grit”

Sean Durkin’s drama The Iron Claw, based on the story of a family of wrestlers from Texas who became famous in the 1980s, is being released. Despite the dedication of the cast, the film, considers Yulia Shagelman, turned out to be superficial.

Americans who experienced the 1980s at a fairly conscious age are familiar with the surname von Erich. This is the family nickname of athletes who were called “the Kennedys of wrestling”, famous equally for their achievements in the ring and for the series of misfortunes that befell them – so many of them that it gave rise to the legend of a family curse. Of the six von Erich brothers, only one has survived to this day: the eldest died as a result of an absurd accident as a child, the rest were taken by death at very young ages. Director and scriptwriter Sean Durkin, a wrestling fan who worked on “Full Grit” for almost ten years, even removed one of the brothers from the film, the plot was too sad.

The film starts with a black-and-white prologue, in which the father of the family, born Jack Adkisson, who invented the pseudonym Fritz von Erich (Holt McCallany), fights in the ring. He retains professional rage, in his case not at all feigned, outside the arena, explaining through clenched teeth to his pregnant wife Dottie (Maura Tierney) that only the heavyweight champion title, for which he is ready to do anything, will ensure their family a life of prosperity and safety, and to his very young sons Kevin and David – that they must be “stronger, tougher, more successful, better than absolutely everyone.” In the hard folds of the faces of Fritz and Dottie, in her dry eyes and quietly repeated prayer, the imprint of the grief she experienced is noticeable, but they do not talk about it out loud.

After about a decade and a half, Fritz, who never achieved the championship and became a promoter, transfers his ambitions to his grown-up sons: now Kevin (Zac Efron) is fighting for the title, David (Harris Dickinson) will also soon follow in his and his father’s footsteps, and Kerry ( Jeremy Allen White is training to go to the Olympics as a discus thrower. This dream would be shattered by the boycott of the 1980 Olympics by the United States and other Western countries, and then Kerry would return home to join his brothers in the ring. The youngest, Mike (Stanley Simons), although he eats for three, building up muscle mass at the insistence of his father, is actually more interested in music than wrestling, but he will not be able to escape the family business, and with it the curse about which Kevin’s voiceover tells us for the first time.

Kevin, who took on the responsibilities of an older brother after the death of Jack Jr., is the emotional center of both the family, where feelings are not usually expressed even at funerals, and of the entire film. Beneath the somewhat intimidating mountain of muscles that Zac Efron gained for the role, it is not difficult to discern the gentleness of character, kindness and almost childish naivety. However, he has to hide these qualities, trying, according to Fritz’s behests, to be tougher and stronger, so as not to lose his place on the scale of favorites, which the father regularly reminds his sons about.

Of course, “Full Grit” is not primarily about wrestling, but about patriarchy, which is disastrous even for the men to whom it supposedly grants all possible privileges, and about artificial standards of masculinity. Sports, both violent and ostentatious, yet requiring real investment of effort and energy, serve as the perfect metaphor for these standards. The problem, however, is that Durkin’s film itself is like a wrestling match – it obviously cost everyone involved a lot of physical and emotional investment, and it turned out to be cleverly staged, but almost devoid of internal content.

The heart of the picture, in theory, should be the sincere love of the brothers for each other, which cannot be destroyed even by the competition imposed on them by Fritz, but, despite all the efforts of the actors, their interaction remains superficial. The characters’ personalities are outlined in one or two strokes: Efron gets the most profitable role, McCallany – the most one-dimensional, Tierney squeezes everything he can out of the clichéd image of the mother, quietly suffering on the periphery of the plot. And when the young Von Erichs begin to fall victim to the curse, but in fact to their father’s “grip of steel”, one after another, and the film suddenly becomes exaggeratedly sentimental, it is difficult to escape the feeling that the real story was simply made up.