A damn good film (The Damned United (DVD))

Member Name: dangaroo

Product:	The Damned United (DVD)
Date:	08/10/09 (31 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good acting from Sheen, interesting story

Disadvantages: not particularly factual

The Damned United is a film that I'd been looking forward to watching for quite a while, being a fan of both British cinema, football and Brian Clough (despite limited knowledge on the latter), it wasn't a film that was easy to come by for me, so when the chance finally came along - I wasn't going to pass it up. This proved to be a good decision, as it's one of the more different films in recent times. Probably the best sports film I've seen in recent times.

Many sport films tend to be either turned into a comedy or designed for a children's audience, The Damned United is far from that being a rather dramatic affair. There are moments of humour, but depression too. The fact vs fiction is debatable with numerous inacurracies from incidents that took place, to members of the team and dates slightly wrong at times. The Clough family and a handful of others don't seem to particularly approve of it. I'd take it as a bit of fiction with a pinch of fact.

The film does a good job though of creating a story around the manager's feelings during his extremely short and unsuccesful time as Leeds manager, the film moves around in eras - flicking between the time at Leeds and the build up to it. Some of the footballer's characters seem badly acted out and Peter Taylor doesn't seem very similar to the real-life one but I like Timothy Spall anyway, so sort of accepted the version on offer here!

Michael Sheen has a lot of charisma in the film and does an excellent Clough impersonation throughout. Overall, I enjoyed the film and found that it had a nice balance between sadness and happy moments, despite obviously not really documenting the height of Cloughie's career.

Summary: Definitely worth watching