In wide release is Sean Durkin's film 'The Iron Claw,' an award-contending film about 80s wrestling, in which a dad can do anything except be a father.

On a small but fairly prosperous ranch in the USA lives the Von Erich family — a stern and mighty patriarch father who took the pseudonym Fritz (Holt McCallany), his quiet wife Doris (Maura Tierney), and their four sons: Kevin (Zac Efron), David (Harris Dickinson), Kerry (), and Mike (Stanley Simons).

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The eldest, Kevin, has been in wrestling for a long time and is preparing for a fight for the main heavyweight title (which his father never won). David helps him with TV appearances, as he is more relaxed and artistic. Kerry is at the Olympic team training camp, and the youngest, Mike, is far from sports and plays in a local rock band in the evenings.

Everything changes in an instant when Kevin, against his father's wishes, advice, and pressure, loses the title fight. David, wanting to help his brother, declares himself another fighter in the family pantheon and steps into the ring alongside Kevin. Later, to the father's delight, Kerry joins the brothers when his dream of a gold medal shatters as the USA decides not to send its team to the Olympics in Moscow.

For a while, the trio of Von Erich brothers successfully conquers the rings of their native Texas and paves their way to the major league, gaining an army of fans along the way (most of them female fans, one of whom Kevin eventually marries). But the further they go, the scarier it gets: Fritz Von Erich increasingly pressures his sons, ignoring their complaints and failing health.

To avoid upsetting their father, even the youngest, Mike, steps into the ring, though his physical condition is far from ideal. Competition among the brothers intensifies, and none of them suspects the tragic consequences this will lead to. 'We survived this hell, and it's behind us. I promise,' says the head of the family at the very beginning, not realizing that he has only opened the door to darkness.

Director Sean Durkin is not new to exploring the despotism and ambition of main antagonists. In 'Martha Marcy May Marlene,' such was the cult leader from whose pressure the heroine played by Elizabeth Olsen fled. In the later 'The Nest,' the father of the family pretended to be a wealthy financier for a long time but ended up bankrupt.

In this sense, a film about wrestling, where the main formula of cinematic sports 'no pain, no gain' works perhaps even more vividly due to the flashy and operetta-like facade behind which no one notices pain, injuries, lost health, loneliness, and oblivion, would have been excellent material for Durkin, who has honed his skills in depicting destructive family relationships. Material where he could have spread his wings, given the already standard two-hour runtime of 'The Iron Claw' and the support of independent A24.

However, 'The Iron Claw' unexpectedly turns from a voluminous, event-rich story (10 years of ups and downs of the Von Erich family) into a standard wiki-film, not giving enough breathing room to any of the characters. Not even to Zac Efron (whose musculature, it seems, could separately contend for an Oscar), who, by the way, is the main narrator of these sad events.

The only segment where he managed to shine is the final 7-8 minutes, when Kevin's character frantically rushes between the ropes, then literally destroys his opponent in the ring, and afterwards looks with a blank stare at his father's disappointed face. The father realizes that Kevin is lost to him forever, and Kevin himself cannot believe it (a very powerful scene).

Efron himself has long outgrown teen comedies and once again proves that he deserves big roles. Here he clearly lacked screen time, but the actor's physical transformation for the role has always been highly regarded. In total, this could have earned him a nomination for the main Hollywood award.

Throughout the entire film, the director stubbornly pushes one simple idea: basic attention to the sons' feelings, rather than their muscles, could easily have fixed the situation overall. But Fritz persistently saw in his sons an extension of himself, or rather the result he never achieved. Such straightforwardness begins to suffocate by the end, no less than the very hold invented by Von Erich Sr., after which the film is named. Sometimes it seems that the director himself cannot believe that the viewer has already grasped everything and that he could shift focus to other details, other characters, give free rein to imagination, move away from standards, and show his own authorial taste.

'The Iron Claw' is a colorful, swift, though not too deep (and sometimes even superficially shallow), but quite audience-friendly sports drama with notes of a sad ode to fragile masculinity, lost illusions, athleticism, and blind loyalty to one's parent, where the triumphant victory of the winner each time shatters against the desperate question: 'What did I do wrong again, Dad?'