The story of the Von Erich wrestling family is a famous one, but it’s a tragic one. The movie about their triumphs and tragedy is a really well made movie, but a it a good movie about wrestling?
The short answer is that it is, but that whilst it features a lot that wrestling fans will understand and enjoy, this is more a film about fathers and sons, brothers and family than it is about the actual wrestling. In this sense it is actually a really good movie about wrestling, as wrestling is just as much about getting the audience invested in the characters as it is about the in ring action.
Zack Efron stars as Kevin Von Erich, who (spoiler warning if you’re not familiar with the movie or the real life story) is the last surviving of the Von Erich brothers. The patriarch of the family was Fritz Vin Erich, who during his career was a hated Nazi character who used his finishing move, the iron Claw. The movie skips over that his character was that of a Nazi, but after an opening sequence that shows Fritz in the ring, we are introduced to his sons, Kevin, David, Kerry and Mike.
Wrestling fans will know that there were actually six Von Erich boys, and whilst the eldest son, who died as a child, is acknowledge in this movie, the film cuts the Chris Von Erich, and amalgamates aspects of his story into the character of Mike. The logic of the director Sean Durkin is that the inclusion of Chris would have been just one too many tragedies to handle in the story he was trying to tell.
It’d seem he had the blessing of Kevin Von Erich for this, but that Kevin wasn’t really involved in the process of making the film.
Zac Efron maybe gives a career best performance as Kevin Von Erich, who is presented as the big brother who tries to do his best to look out for his younger brothers and also at times stand up against an at times overbearing and controlling father.
I did feel that the movie was well told, but as a wrestling fan who has taken an interest in the lives and times of the stars outside of their time in the ring, I was aware that this film was very condensed with certain things not fitting the timeline of events. Italian picked and chose moments from history and remixed them somewhat to tell the story it wanted to tell, and I’m ok with that.
The film has one scene in particular where Kevin’s future wife questions him on wrestling being fake, and Kevin explains that if he does well at his job he’ll get a promotion and that is what winning titles are like. This was a good analogy for how wrestling works, but the film still followed the path every wrestling movie does and that was at times treat the wrestling as real.
Italian portrayed a scene where a frustrated Kevin seemed to take out his rage on NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair, much to Flair being oblivious to it. It also had promo (wrestling term for promotional interview) sequences with Flair where they leaned into the promo to build the tension towards the coming matches even though the match of course was pre-determined.
There are blink and you’ll miss them cameos from former AEW World Champion Maxwell Jacob Friedman and Chavo Guerrero Jr. Chavo was responsible for putting together the wrestling sequences in the movie, and I’m not sure how, but MJF was somehow an executive producer on the film.
Outside this, the guys playing Harley Race, and the Fabulous Freebirds are reasonable, but the guy playing Ric Flair was way off the mark. I saw an interview with some of the principal cast who play the Von Erich brothers and I was fairly disappointed to get the impression that other than Stanley Simons who played Mike, the others seemed to know nothing about wrestling at all. Despite this I felt they all did good.
I was surprised to see a match prorated on the screen which appeared to end in a tap out despite the film being set primarily in the 1980s, and the tap out rule, as far as I’m aware, not being intrigued into pro wrestling until 1997.
The film did a great job to handle the tragic deaths of David, Mike and Kerry with sensitivity, but all happened off screen with a degree of mystery around them. I understand this, as agin was done to focus mainly on the emotional impact of Kevin and show a hardness to Fritz. I recall seeing an interview with Fritz after the death of Kerry where he expressed that he had hoped his sons would become doctors or other well respected professions, but the film only portrayed that he wanted them to become wrestlers.
If you didn’t know the true history of the events, you’d believe Kerry lost his foot in an accident whilst still NWA Worlds Champion, but this isn’t what happened. Likewise it skipped over that David and Kerry had children. To tell the story fuller would have required a mini series, and whilst that would have been great, what was achieved here was a great movie to show the human side of pro wrestling.
Professional wrestling has been hit with more examples of tragedy than most other sports or forms of entertainment, with so many famous wrestlers dying young. It can be easy to forget that when watching the larger than life superstars in the ring. This movie does well to balance highlighting the tragicness of the Von Erich story whilst not just attacking wrestling as is too commonly done in the media by people who don’t watch or understand it.
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