(Crown) Dam good! (The Damned United (DVD))

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	The Damned United (DVD)
Date:	17/09/09 (90 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Authentic and well paced

Disadvantages: Factually inccorrect

It's never easy to make good sports movies, especially a British one, and one about football too. Well the good news is we have a belter here, Michael Sheen's quite brilliant performance as the mercurial football manger Brian Clough a work of art. He's absolutely nailed 'Old Big Ed' and if you throw in a brilliant script and a clever and contrived narrative thread you certainly have the best British football movie ever made. Not that the competition was strong mind.

Based on David Pearce's award winning book 'The Dammed United', about the events around Cloughs infamous 44 days management at Leeds United back in the 70s, Peter Morgan's brilliant screenplay extracts and then manipulates a storyline that never really happened, an erroneous bitter rivalry between Clough and the then Leeds United manager Don Revie, beginning when Clough thinks he is snubbed by the Leeds boss in his early days at Derby for a huge cup match.

There are plenty of other /factual inaccuracies' in the film, some blatant to keep the thing moving forward like all movies need to and others just lazy. Clough's wife and kids were extremely unhappy at the scenes showing Clough drinking in his younger days, Barbara saying he drank no more or less than anyone else in football back then , the problems only really starting in his later years at Forrest in the 1990s, his reddened blotchy 100% proof like the Scotch in the bosses top drawer of many managers office back then.

-The films multitude of inaccuracies-

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1226271/goofs

-The Cast-

Colm Meaney ... Don Revie
Michael Sheen ... Brian Clough
Timothy Spall ... Peter Taylor
Jim Broadbent ... Sam Longson
Sydney Wade ... Younger Elizabeth Clough
Elizabeth Carling ... Barbara Clough
Oliver Stokes ... Nigel Clough
Ryan Day ... Simon Clough
Isabella Eades-Jones ... Elizabeth Clough
Joseph Dempsie ... Duncan McKenzie
Stephen Graham ... Billy Bremner
Peter McDonald ... Johnny Giles
Mark Cameron ... Norman Hunter
Brian McCardie ... Dave Mackay
Martin Compston ... John O'Hare
Giles Alderson ... Colin Todd
Stewart Robertson ... Archie Gemmill
Mark Bazeley ... Austin Mitchell
Tony Gubba ... Himself
Michael Parkinson ... Himself
John Craven ... Himself

-The Plot-

We join the action with Don Revie (Colm Meaney) accepting the England job at a press conference, in the year of 1974 after a very successful era at Leeds. Clough and his assistant Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall) have just returned from a holiday in Majorca, care off Brighton & Hove Albion, their chairman shaking hands with the duo with a free holiday as an incentive to manage his team (In the film Clough and Taylor don't actually get to manage Brighton whereas in reality they did nearly a year there). They are on the South Coast because they have just resigned from Derby County after Clough forced their resignation with an ambitious power play with blustering chairman Sam Longson (Jim Broadbent), the film then immediately spinning back to their glory years at Derby to explore the protagonists dynamic and the success they built at the unfashionable Midlands club that led up to this moment, Derby winning the second and first division championships under Clough and Taylor (the pair bettering that at Forest with two European Cups to boot). This piece of the film also sets up the allegedly Revie snub of the young ambitious Clough, a missed handshake with the underdog in the 1967 F A Cup 3rd round clash the driver for Clough to turn on his idol, from there on in driven on to get his team into the top league and so his revenge against the brutal Leeds United side that literally kicked his side out of the cup and went on to dominate the 1970s, the signing of aging Dave McKay (Brian McCardie) as the Derbyshire captain the catalyst for Cloughs success, Peter Taylor the expert at picking the players.

The film jumps around again and we are soon back in 1974 with Clough taking up the reigns at Leeds United, but without Taylor after the two fell out at Brighton ( the real fall out as over John Robertson's transfer from Forest to Peter Taylor's Derby County, poaching him from Clough), Old Big Ed soon annoying the players in equally memorable style at Elland Road, club captain Billy Bremner (Stephen Graham) particularly narked with the upstarts appointment, an appointment that would last only 44 days....

- - - - - - - - - Quote- - - - - - - - -

Brian Clough: "[to the assembled Leeds players] Well, I might as well tell you now. You lot may all be internationals and have won all the domestic honours there are to win under Don Revie. But as far as I'm concerned, the first thing you can do for me is to chuck all your medals and all your caps and all your pots and all your pans into the biggest dustbin you can find, because you've never won any of them fairly. You've done it all by bloody cheating".
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --

-The Conclusion-

Up until this enjoyable movie when ever I see Michael Sheen on screen do his caricatures, say like Blair in 'The Queen' and Frost in Frost/Nixon, he just reminded me of 'Alan Bas`tard', Rick Mayals ghastly Tory MP creation. I always felt Sheen was a Steve Coogan style comedy actor up until this point and his impressions rather lame, as are Coogans. But this is genious. But here his Clough is just fabulous, the voice and mannerisms uncanny. Sadly some of the other casting in the movie was pretty poor, Timothy Spall as Taylor, way off the mark. I suspect they chose the lugubrious Brummie to increase the contrast with Clough, or maybe a name on the credits, but it doesn't fit the image of the cigar smoking Taylor we knew. Leeds fans will also be rather miffed in the portrayal of their legendary team, a raggedy bunch on screen. Stephen Graham, who plays the skinhead thug in 'This is England', seemed to be picked purely for that fact alone to play the combative Bremner, looking ridiculous in his wig. The less said about the guy who played Johnny Giles (Peter McDonald) the better.

Another issue is that blatant artistic license with the facts and the way the characters are portrayed in the film, creating a story that is less homage to history but more than a sizeable fabrication Alistair Campbell would be proud of. You want biopics to be accurate as that's the attraction to the film and when it's on such a well known icon that many of Forest and Leeds fans know the intimate background to you have to get it right not to alienate them. But if you can just go with it and not nit pick too much its pleasurable experience and you will be sucked in pretty quickly with Sheens mesmeric performance. I suspect only the hardcore (like bitter old Midlands sports hacks that were up in arms about it), would pick upon the glaring goofs. It's a lovely sports biopic that flows and entertains like the finest Rainbow Trout river sin Scotland.

The screenplay is also excellent and director Tom Hooper producing a very authentic period appeal, capturing that 1970s working-class feel at football grounds and in the terraces with authentic footage and smart linkage. Watching this is like being back there. Not that I'm that old. In many shots the supporter's seen are actually fake dolls, some 2500 of them, a lot of the external shots taken at Chesterfields ground, Derby County now using a brand new stadium, of course. Ironically, when we see Clough train his Derby team, the filming was done just across the heath from Elland Road, Leeds Uniteds current ground. Sheens ball skills are pretty good, once on the books of QPR no less, according to the excellent audio commentary. The film is also deliberately stuffed full of Cloughisms, ones most footy fans can quote so I wont. This really is the film for the boys to rent for September as the nights close in and the beers build up in the fridge for the football season.

-Honors-

251 goals in 271 starts for Middlesboro and Sunderland

Only 2 England caps

Managed Hartlepool
Managed Derby County 1967-1972
Managed Brighton 1973-74
Managed Nott's Forest 1975-1993

-Derby County-

League Championship: Champions 1971-72

Football League Second Division: Champions 1968-69

-Leeds United-

Charity Shield: Runners up 1974

-Nottingham Forest-

European Cup: Winners 1979, 1980
European Super Cup: Winners 1979
Runners up 1980

Intercontinental Cup
Runners up 1980

League Championship: Champions 1977-78
Runners up 1978-79

-FA Cup-

Runners up 1991

League Cup: Winners 1978, 1979, 1989, 1990

Runners up 1980, 1992

FA Charity Shield: Winners 1978

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clough

= = = = = Special Features = = = = = =

-Audio Commentary-

Writer and director talk about their enjoyable film in a rather excellent layered chat.

-Deleted Scenes-

There's at least an hour of them here, some bits what actually happened in history, some not.

-The Changing Game: Football in the 1970s-

Some behind the scenes stuff looking at how they created the era and tried to adhere to the legend of Clough.

-'Cloughisms'-

-Pitch Perfect: The Making of The Damned United-

The young screenplay writer runs Dartford Football Club and so knows his football, now running a Clough soccer school for kids at his ground. The guy has a passion for his subject and so produced an excellent script. He fills in the back ground of Leeds United, who at one point had 15 Scott's on the books. How the game has changed.

-Creating Clough-

Sheen talks about his masterpiece performance.

-Remembering 'Cloughie'-

Some excellent archive stuff rounds off the enjoyable extras package.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Imdb.com scores it 7.7 out of 10.0 (1,983 votes)
Any two films for £5 for two nights at Blockbusters (or one film for £1.50 a week at Northampton Central library!)
RuN-TiMe 97 minutes
= = = = = = = = = = =


Sam Longson: His salary's 300 quid a week? You can't pay a footballer that!
Brian Clough: That's the way things are going, Uncle Sam...

Summary: Excellent sports biopic