Word: soccer
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Among Manchester United Football Club's 300 million or so supporters worldwide are two Burmese men whose love of the game spans generations. One is a stout, bespectacled, betel nut - chewing septuagenarian, the other his favorite teenage grandson, and like many of their soccer-mad compatriots they stay up late into Burma's tropical nights to watch live broadcasts from faraway England. So far, so normal. But knowing the grandfather in this touching scene is Senior General Than Shwe, the xenophobic chief of Burma's junta, makes it seem all wrong. Rabidly anti-Western, yet pro-Wayne Rooney, is this...
...would be a tremendous shame if “The Damned United,” the latest collaboration between screenwriter Peter Morgan and actor Michael Sheen, were deemed merely a good sports movie. This is not a genre film. Football—soccer in this country—is not the subject matter so much as a conduit to the film’s study of ego and relationships. Previous collaborators on “Frost/Nixon” (in which Sheen played television presenter David Frost) and “The Special Relationship...
...Damned United” is the story of six years in the life of the late Brian Clough (Sheen), a soccer manager legendary for his success on the pitch as well as his penchant for the irreverent sound bite and a tendency, like Charles de Gaulle and Michael Jordan, to see his team as an extension of himself. Loosely based on the novel of the same name by David Peace, the film focuses on Clough’s ill-fated 44-day tenure as manager of Leeds United—“The Damned United?...
...ensuing preoccupation with Revie explains many of Clough’s actions throughout the rest of the film. Like Paul Ashworth in “Fever Pitch” (1997; not the Jimmy Fallon movie about the Red Sox), Clough is consumed by soccer to the detriment of his mental and physical health and the well-being of those around him. But the true emotional and thematic centerpiece of “The Damned United” is the relationship between Clough and his assistant manager, Peter Taylor (brilliantly played by Timothy Spall, best known for his role as Peter...
...Damned United,” by the mere nature of its theme, is unlikely to attract American audiences. Despite the growing interest in soccer in this country, a film about Leeds United in the 1970s, featuring faded stars whose names are now familiar only to Leeds fans, is a minor enthusiasm. After their explorations of epochal moments in British and American history in “The Queen” and “Frost/Nixon,” this is a decidedly quiet triumph from Peter Morgan and Michael Sheen. Yet it underscores their masterful ability to bring characters...