The Damned United

I'm not a big fan of football and am too young to recall anything that Brian Clough did as a player or manager, but this film makes me want to find out more. That is the mark of a great docu-drama. Like Capturing the Friedmans, Monster or The Last King of Scotland once I'd finished watching, I began looking on Wikipedia for more information about him and also to seek out the book that the film is based on.

Told in flashbacks between 1968 and 1974 we see Brian Clough's (Michael Sheen) rise in Derby County from the bottom of Second Division to First Division Champions in 1972. Due to Clough's nature off the pitch, signing players without the Chairman Sam Longson's permission, wonderfully played by Jim Broadbent, Clough is fired from Derby and hired by Leeds Utd. However, the team don't respect him and will not play football the way he wants them to. During the entire film, the Leeds players are made out to be just thugs, playing dirty, cheating and doing anything they can to intimidate and bully the opposition. This becomes a losing battle for Clough, who is unable to step out of the shadow of the former manager Don Revie (Colm Meaney) and he is held responsible for the poor performances by Leeds which ultimately leads to his dismissal.

How Michael Sheen has not been nominated for this film (though he may have missed the awards season) I shall never know. His ability to take on the role of real people (as he had done before playing Tony Blair in The Queen, David Frost in Frost/Nixon) and embody them is amazing. His impersonation of Brian Clough is almost as good as anything Rory Bremner could achieve. The duo of Sheen and Timothy Spall as his assistant manager Peter Taylor is a wonderful pairing. There is a real warmth that you can feel from both of them which make their scenes wonderful to watch.

Deleted scenes add almost a half hour of playing time to the film. Unlike other films, where you know why it wasn't used, a lot of the scenes could easily have been slotted in the film without affecting the quality. A collection of interviews of Michael Sheen re-enacting some of Clough's classic interviews from the time such as Parkinson, David Frost and David Coleman. Four featurettes look at the creation of the film, Michael Sheen's preparation for the role, some famous fans and players remembering Clough and also a look at how football was in the 1970s. All four are extremely interesting and are worth a look. The other wonderful extra is a commentary by Director Tom Hooper, Producer Andy Harries and Michael Sheen. I often listen to commentaries and become bored halfway, due to silence or dull stories, but with this one I didn't as all three seemed to have a real enthusiasm for the film and be full to the brim with stories about its creation. I believe they all could have carried on talking long after the film had finished.

The Damned United is not just a film for football fans or even those who enjoy docu-dramas. It is a story of making decisions, sticking to them and fighting for what you think is right. There are those who may think that Brian Clough was just a 'Big Head', but this film proves that underneath that big head there was a heart of gold, one that his time at Leeds Utd simply could not destroy.