Film Review: Love, hate at play in 'The Damned United'

Photo by Sony Pictures Classics

Michael Sheen stars as vain, smart-mouthed Leeds United coach Brian Clough in "The Damned United."

As a film inspired by British football, "The Damned United" may hold limited appeal for Memphis moviegoers. But it's also a film about a form of unrequited or spurned love, which means it's a story about love and hate, which means it's a movie that everybody can relate to. And yet, it's a movie entirely without romantic love -- in fact, it's been a long time since I've seen a film in which women were so nearly absent.

Photo by Sony Pictures Classics

Michael Sheen stars as vain, smart-mouthed Leeds United coach Brian Clough in "The Damned United."

Michael Sheen -- known for his portrayal of Tony Blair in "The Queen" and David Frost in "Frost/Nixon" -- stars as vain, smart-mouthed, talented Brian Clough, a soccer manager recruited in 1974 to run the famous Leeds United team after the departure of longtime superstar manager Don Revie (Colm Meaney).

Revie had been Clough's idol and role model as Clough molded his own team, tiny Derby County, into an unlikely championship contender. "Peas in a pod, me and Don, two peas in a bloody pod," Clough claimed. But after a perceived snub, Clough becomes Revie's tireless detractor, and his jealousy adds to his burden when he finds himself unable to emulate Revie's success at Leeds.

That's the hate story as well as the spurned love story. A truer and more moving type of love story -- a story of loyalty and friendship and business collaboration and, perhaps, betrayal -- focuses on Clough and his assistant at Derby County, Peter Taylor, played by the always welcome Timothy Spall (the odd-looking man perfectly cast as "Wormtail" in the Harry Potter films). The cast also includes Jim Broadbent as the Derby County team owner.

As much a pleasure to watch as the actors are the compositions of director Tom Hooper and cinematographer Ben Smithard, who favor odd croppings and visual misdirection, as if looking at events from the shifty angle of a player preparing for a penalty kick. The late 1960s/early 1970s production design and the aura of working-class grit and grime add to the "beauty" of the scenes.

Clough and Revie apparently are legends to British football fans; the movie is adapted from a fact-based if highly fictionalized novel by David Peace about Clough's experiences at Leeds. The screenwriter is Peter Morgan, writer of "The Queen" and "Frost/Nixon," a man who obviously knows how to write lines that Sheen can make his own. The script's origin as a novel explains why the movie focuses on this particular time in Clough's career; judging from the biographic information presented at the end of the film, Clough -- who led a Nottingham Forest team to two European Cups, and is memorialized with two heroic statues in England -- could inspire any number of inspirational sports dramas.

"The Damned United" is playing exclusively at Malco's Ridgeway Four.

-- John Beifuss: 529-2394

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