The Damn United

With this film writer Peter Morgan and star Michael Sheen complete a trilogy of sorts. As in The Queen and Frost/Nixon, they take figures from recent British history to tell a story that travels well, and further than you would expect. You needn’t have the slightest interest in soccer to get into this fact-based sports story, which is really a fascinating character study. Sheen plays Brian Clough, a flamboyant and loquacious ex-player rising through the coaching ranks in the early 1970s. He flames out when given the chance to coach the best team in English football, before righting himself, and as the end-titles indicate, going on to a famously successful career. Director Toby Hooper surrounds Sheen with some of the best character actors in Britain -- Timothy Spall as Clough’s coaching better half, Colm Meaney as his great nemesis, and Jim Broadbent as an antagonistic owner – and delivers a little bit of effective on-field action but a whole lot of period flavor. The film is pared down from a novel based on the historical events and clocks in at a modest 1:40, but the DVD offers a number of deleted scenes that definitely add to the story, along with a variety of extras that help define Clough’s standing in the English game. Nonetheless, it’s as a universal story of vanity, obsession, and comeuppance that this film really shoots and scores. (2009, dvd.) *7* (MC-81.)