Look this hit me somewhere personal with both family (my oldest brother committed suicide) and mental issues (I have depression and have been suicidal in the past), along with professional wrestling having a spot in my heart both emotionally and cerebrally since childhood, so on a me level it gets this five even if on an objective level it might be a half or full star lower. Things are truncated to fit the runtime or because it’d be unbelievably sad (there is a whole fifth brother) and it’s idea of what wrestling really is in universe is a bit muddled, but the cast all nail it- especially Efron- with humanity and love, the tragedy hanging over it all in the classical inevitable sense from knowing the story beforehand lends an extra dread to it all, and it was incredibly cathartic. The third act from Kerry’s suicide on left me bawling.

I loved Live That Way Forever at the party being the moment where they were all just happy before it all gradually went wrong, and it made its reprise all the harder hitting. I loved the kids being there for their father, that kind of thing always hits me, parent and child being a two way street and being better than their forebears. How that love the brothers always had, raw and emotional and true, could be passed onto him and his sons free from Fitz and his toxic ideals of masculinity and results. You can break the cycle and there can be a little light in a darkness unfair and that should never have been.

The imagine spot of Kevin with the brothers could’ve been hokey or too sentimental, but they earned it, they stuck the landing by keeping it in key with who Kevin was the whole movie. It’s a desperate, teary hope of his, and that’s what made it work. Maybe the whole movie could be considered that. That beating heart, working to be sensitive to the tragedy and not sensationalist with what they show and what they don’t. This is epitomized by Kerry, showing not his head wound but the blood dripping and coloring the leaves red. The serene landscape of the home they loved for the fact it had each other there colored once again by tragedy. After the credits rolled I just stuck around with the friends I saw it with and confided with them and them in me of similar tragedies and struggles in our life, and that’s powerful to me. That’s something I’ll always hold close and that I’ll think of with this movie, and it’s why I can’t give it anything but a five.