new release : THE DAMNED UNITED : 6/10

Published on: March 23rd, 2009

“I can see through the door of the Gentlemen’s that the B feature, Bring Me the Head of Don Revie, has only a few minutes left to run.”
                                             Monty Python
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March is shaping up to be “David Peace month” in the UK, with the TV adaptation of his Red Riding novels airing on the first three Thursdays and the big-screen version of his The Damned Utd, a fictionalised version of Brian Clough’s disastrous 44-day tenure as manager of Leeds United in 1974, being released on the final Friday. Ironically enough, while Red Riding very much has the look and feel of a film, The Damned United (why the slight difference in title?) plays rather more like an extended telly play.
   Much lighter - jauntier, indeed - in tone than the book, which was essentially a repetitive journey into paranoia, existential angst and despair, it concentrates on the relationships between Clough (Michael Sheen) and three key men in his life: his long-suffering assistant Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall), his choleric boss during his rather more successful stint at Derby County, Sam Longson (Jim Broadbent) – glimpsed during extensive flashbacks, an acceptable substitute for the book’s metronomic back-and-forth structure - and, most traumatic of all, with his nemesis and bete noire, his Leeds predecessor, Don Revie (Colm Meaney.)
   The results are decidedly uneven, and frequently marred by some very sloppy anachronisms – most distracting of all, we see Leeds United’s ground Elland Road as it looks today, a totally different structure from the near-seatless stadium of the early 70s – not to mention several casting-choices that will raise eyebrows among viewers familiar with the real-life individuals depicted (Spall’s Taylor; Stephen Graham in what looks like a ginger frightwig as tough-tackling Leeds captain Billy Bremner).
   Sheen certainly has his moments as the flamboyantly idiosyncratic and self-assured Clough, but never quite manages to disappear into the role as he did with Tony Blair on The Queen, also scripted by Peter Morgan – and at times is distractingly reminiscent of his Kenneth Williams impersonation from TV’s Fantabulosa!
   Perhaps appropriately – given their characters’ roiling enmities – Sheen, while front-and-centre pretty much throughout, is repeatedly (and most amusingly) upstaged by Meaney, a dead-ringer for Revie (down to the roots of his very seventies barnet) who provides crucial, bluff chalk to Clough’s pungent ‘cheese.’ Indeed, the film might have more profitably concentrated on the Revie/Clough feud – like the book did – rather than emphasising the up-and-down Clough/Taylor relationship in terms that Hollywood would currently term a “bromance,” complete with a very movie-ish happy ending with Clough grovelling before his estranged colleague/mate.
   It’s one of several sequences which – in contrast to Morgan’s previous behind-the-headlines “speculations” – has the distinct smack of scriptwriterly contrivance, in a watchable but somehow ultimately unsatisfying enterprise which never quite does justice to a man who, as well as being one of the most remarkable figures in the history of British sport, was a fascinating cultural presence in the nation’s turbulent seventies. Score draw.

Neil Young
23rd March, 2009
a considerably longer version of this review is available at A Love Supremedirector : Tom Hooper*
country : UK
year : 2009
run-time : 97m (BBFC)

seen : 23rd March, 2009
cinema : Vue, Leeds (press show)
format : digital
(including half a dozen ”stray” single black frames in the second half)

MVP : Colm Meaney
respected second opinion : Martin O’Neill, BBC Radio 5 Live

* not Tobe, sadly

a first XI of Association Football films
1 The Arsenal Stadium Mystery (Thorold Dickinson, UK 1940)
2 The Saturday Men (John Fletcher, 1962) [short]
3 Coup de Tete (Jean Jacques Annaud, France 1979)
4 The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty (Wim Wenders, W Germany 1972)
5 Kill the Referee (Jean-Pierre Mocky, France 1984)
6 Offside (Jafar Panahi, Iran 2006)
7 Zidane : A 21st Century Portrait (Gordon & Parreno, France 2006)
8 Substitute (Dhorasoo & Poulet, France 2006)
9 The Great Game (Maurice Elvey, UK 1953)
10 Gregory’s Girl (Bill Forsyth, UK 1982)
11 Old Time Football (Pal Sandor, Hungary)