This meant Michael Sheen's extraordinary performance as football coach Brian Clough went unrewarded; inhabiting Clough's needling, sarcastic tone and bantam posture, Sheen is riveting.
Based on the 2006 bestseller, THE DAMNED UNITED focuses on Clough's 44 day tenure as manager of Leeds United in 1974 and the events that led him there.
The film contends that Clough bore a grudge against fellow manager Don Revie from 1968 when Revie's Leeds played at Derby who Clough managed. Much to Clough's chagrin, Revie ignored him and left afterward.
Sacked from Derby for arguing with the owner, Clough with his close friend and coaching assistant Peter Taylor were hired by Brighton but Clough walked out when offered Revie's job at Leeds.
But mutual distrust between manager and players started the rot...
Shelf or charity shop? THE DAMNED UNITED scores with Michael Sheen's wonderful Brian Clough, a palpable feeling of place and time, and marvellous teamwork from Timothy Spall as long-suffering Peter Taylor, Stephen Graham and Peter McDonald as the resentful Billy Bremner and Johnny Giles, Henry Goodman and Jim Broadbent as Clough's angry club owners and Colm Meaney as Clough's nemesis Don Revie. One for the DVD limbo of the plastic storage box.
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