The Iron Claw Review: 6 Ups & 3 Downs

1. Screwed-Up Timeline

Movies that follow real-life tales will often take creative license with the details, moving events around, omitting certain situations and sensationalizing parts to make for a more dramatic, compelling story.

But for all its successes, The Iron Claw plays a bit fast and loose with its sequencing of events in the Von Erichs’ story, compressing a series of tragedies befalling the brothers that took place over the course of several years into 20 minutes of film time. David’s death, Kerry’s motorcycle accident and Mike’s overdose happened during a three-year period but whisked by in less than a half-hour.

David is shown coughing up blood at Kevin’s wedding, just days before he leaves for his fateful 1984 tour of Japan, but Kevin was married in August 1980. The film suggests Kerry’s motorcycle accident happened the same night he won the NWA World Title in 1984, when that event didn’t happen until two years later. Mike’s shoulder injury that led to his toxic shock syndrome happened before Kerry’s accident, not after as the movie portrays.

Even Kevin’s wrestling career is subject to creative license. A major focal point early on is that Kevin lost to Harley Race in a non-title match and never got a rematch for the NWA World Title before Race dropped the championship to Ric Flair. In reality, Kevin wrestled Race for the NWA title eight times between 1979-83 and never faced him in a non-title singles bout.

Later, a distraught Kevin is shown fighting Ric Flair in 1986 after Mike’s death. Kevin actually wrestled Flair several times for the world title in 1984-85, but never after May 1985, nearly two years before Mike overdosed.

It wouldn’t have been that hard to keep a lot of these events in the proper order without sacrificing story and drama, which is what makes some of the decisions perplexing.