The frequent pairing of playwright/screenwriter Peter Morgan and actor Michael Sheen—The Deal, The Queen, Frost-Nixonand now The Damned United—is unbalanced. Morgan writes self-satisfied scripts, borderline offensive in how much empathy they grant real-life monsters while Sheen shows up and acts his heart out. It’d be a bum deal if the scripts didn’t ritualistically (and justly) earn the actor awards. He’ll likely nab a few more trophies for his ferociously playful turn in Morgan’s The Damned United as notorious and highly successful football manager Brian Clough, a man so cocky he attracted the attention of no less than Muhammad Ali.
We open not during Clough’s legendary runs for Derby County or Nottingham Forest (the latter during which he netted back-to-back European Cup wins), but his aborted stint at Leeds United. Arriving at his new job having previously attacked his new players in interviews—not to mention replacing the much beloved Don Revie (Colm Meaney)—Clough watches as one of England’s top outfits plummets. As the bloodbath ensues, the script cuts back to his name-making triumphs, limning the evolution of a successful asshead.
Having previously played second fiddle to Helen Mirren and Frank Langella, Sheen gets front and center, and it’s easy to read The Damned United as a glorified present from Morgan to his collaborator. Sheen has at it: He digs into his broad Manchester accent, creating a larger-than-life character.
Watching him is a hoot. Alas, it’s not a one-man show; there’s still Morgan’s script to deal with. As with The Queen and Frost-Nixon, Morgan’s take on Clough isn’t black-and-white. But where The Queen was complex, nimbly finding humanity in Elizabeth but not letting the institution of which she’s a part off the hook, Frost-Nixon was complex, teetering on incoherent, ultimately offering apologies for both its slacker-opportunist “journalist” and its ethics-impaired former prez.
The Damned United is more like the latter: Clough is a total fucking prick, but he gets results! The drama winds up framed around Clough apologizing to his dejected right-hand man (Timothy Spall), at which point, as far as the script is concerned, Clough is free to conquer the world, unencumbered by his pathologies. Nuts to that. C
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