music friday: ann peebles, “i can’t stand the rain”
what i watched last week

by request: the damned united (tom hooper, 2009)

Sean recommended this one. In my review of This Is England, I mentioned Stephen Graham, who was excellent in that film, noting that he plays Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire. Sean said he was also Billy Bremmer in The Damned United, and I said I’d consider that a request.

While The Damned United has a fine cast of character actors, and a charismatic character from real life in Brian Clough, without Michael Sheen as Clough, there really isn’t much of a movie here. Sheen is known in the States for playing Tony Blair and David Frost in other movies, and we can add Clough to the list, although very few Americans have ever heard of Clough. Sheen is terrific, making an impression on me in ways I seem to have missed before (I didn’t even mention him when I wrote about The Queen and Frost/Nixon). He dominates the film, much as we are led to believe Clough dominated every room he was in.

This is also an unusual sports movie, in that it is, as many have noted, not a rags-to-riches story but a riches-to-rags story. Clough led an eventful life, one filled with glory in the soccer world, yet the film focuses on the worst 44 days of his coaching career. Flashbacks are used to give context, helping us to understand why Clough was the person we see in those 44 days, and Sheen is so dynamic, we want the cocky son-of-a-bitch to succeed. This being history, though, we know he is doomed to fail. (I’m ignoring the question of the film’s fidelity to history, a question that was raised first in response to the book on which the film is based.)

It is the blend of cocksure confidence and failure that makes Sheen’s Clough so interesting, even Shakespearian, as some have suggested. It’s a good enough movie that Americans would probably like it, but there’s little chance they’ll want to see it … it grossed less than a million dollars in the U.S., making only $627 in its final weekend. It would be easy to overrate this one in an attempt to convince you to watch it, and it is better than The Queen and perhaps better than Frost/Nixon. But it’s good, not great. 7/10.

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