Female Film Critics 24/375
There was a lot of wind-up for Chandler Levack’s new film, Mile End Kicks, a coming-of-age tale mixed with a bit of romantic comedy. It doesn’t quite live up to all the hype, but it’s an okay story with strong performances and great music. Whether it has resonance with young women as a rite-of-passage story remains to be seen — a few fully three-dimensional characters in the protagonist’s orbit could have helped.
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As a title, The Iron Claw is both literal and a metaphor. It is the signature move of wrestler Fritz Von Erich when he is about to decimate an opponent in the ring. It also symbolizes the tight grip he holds on the sons who have no real choice except to follow him as the next generation of battling Von Erichs. Writer/director Sean Durkin’s first film since 2020’s The Nest is all at once a sports drama, a family’s biopic, and one of the best depictions of the effects of toxic masculinity ever committed to the screen and a haunting evocation of family dysfunction.
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