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The Damned United (DVD)
Year: 2009
Rating: M
Director: Tom Hooper
Cast: Jim Broadbent, Colm Meaney, Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall
Release Date: February 24, 2010
Distributor: Sony
The Film: 4.0
The Disc: 4.0
FILMINK rates DVDs and Blu-rays out of 5
Another majestic docudrama from The Queen scribe Peter Morgan, the doomed narrative of The Damned United examines how brash football manager Brian Clough (the excellent Michael Sheen) took over champion club Leeds United in 1974, only to run them into the ground. Clough's 44-day tenure with Leeds has gone down as one of the most spectacular failures in the history of the sport, and Morgan's screenplay illustrates pointedly how errors of the human heart can wreck the strongest of men.
The Damned United surprisingly emerges as a tender "bromance" between Clough and his right-hand man, Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall). The two swoon together in victory, and embrace each other in defeat. It's as affectionate, complex and co-dependent a relationship as any marriage, and it is their separation that sees Clough exiting the Leeds fold with an egg-covered face. Football is kept to an admirable minimum here; it's all about the characters whose operatic emotions are as compelling as a World Cup Final. Don't let the soccer turn you off if you're not a fan: the appeal of The Damned United is virtually unlimited. Special features include a commentary, deleted scenes, a making-of, and a featurette about football in the seventies.