Taking the Sheen off

Well, it was ok wasn't it.

Football films are weird. I failed to apprehend this before watching the film, but I've always found that when a novel or film tries to depict football, it just feels a little... flat. The reality seems skewed, the game sequences rendered almost camp. Escape to Victory, of course is the exception that proves the rule, if only 'cos of Ossie.

Now, The Damned United was alright. Not great, like the book, but alright. Martin Sheen was great as Clough, as was Timothy Spall as his friend/male football lover Peter Taylor, but it lacked what made the book so great.

David Peace's Damned United was less of a football book, more of an introspective perusal into the mind of a genius, less warts 'n' all, more just warts. For Peace, football was the handy backdrop with which to hang the inspection of Clough's flawed psyche upon, whereas the film - perhaps trying to eschew the controversy of the book - is much more football-centric, telling the tale of post-1966 British football through the persona of Brian Clough, and not the other way round.

This is certainly a more populist approach, and would have made The Damned United more palatable to the neutral, and a great deal more enjoyable for Clough's poor family. However, it left me feeling like it had come up a little short, lacking the intensity the book had, and more importantly, that Clough had too.