Review: The Damned United

The Damned United is a rip-roaring Boys’ Own dream-turned-nightmare with a peach of a turn by Michael Sheen at its centre.
This is the story of Brian Clough’s 44 days in charge of Leeds United, of his overwhelming desire to beat Don Revie, the super-successful manager in whose footsteps he chose to follow.

While fully fleshing Cloughie out, he is nevertheless very much the hero of the piece (you’ll be cheering him on through every outburst, you’ll feel his hurt when scorned by Revie, by the Leeds players and most painfully by his assistant manager Timothy Spall’s Peter Taylor) – and Colm Meaney’s Revie very much the villain of the piece (the coda makes a wry and vengeful comparison between Cloughie’s subsequent success and Revie’s ensuing failure).

Slighted by Revie upon his first visit to Derby County, Clough becomes consumed by the need to beat him and his mighty Leeds. Half of Cloughie’s outbursts are on the money – he’s the only sane man in the room – and the other half are at best almost wilfully misjudged.

The feel and the look of the 60s and 70s is effortlessly created, but not slavishly so such that the production design becomes a performer in its own right (step forward Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes). That footballing era is also wonderfully conjured, in some ways casting Cloughie as man well before his time.

The film takes a sideways glance at what was to come for football - hooliganism on and off the pitch, a sport both elevated and corrupted by growing mountains of money – without ever fully addressing them.

The film begs the question (and not unreasonably leaves it unanswered): did Clough set out to fail at Leeds? Was his hatred of Revie and his boys so great, all he wanted to do was tear the team down and erase the memory of its triumphs? Better they should be remembered for losing under him than winning – because if they won, everyone would say he had just inherited a great team from Revie…

Sheen is at his crowd-pleasing height, playing Clough with all the pomp the viewer could possibly expect. He also reveals the emotional cripple, the failed player behind all that front and mouth. If there’s a criticism of the film’s take on Clough, it’s that we learn little of the qualities that made him a great manager and gave him the title of best manager never to manage England.
By comparison with Sheen, Spall is hardly stretched, and yet no other British actor could so comfortably play Taylor happily stuck in Clough’s shadow.

Of course, die-hard, life-long Leeds fans need not see this: they didn’t warm to Cloughie then and they won’t now.

Set aside concerns about factual accuracies, or indeed changes from the book (god knows it has got its own doubters) or the Clough family’s disavowal, and just enjoy a great British film with the greatest British actor of his generation. It's a spry 97 minutes long and makes fantastic use of Fleetwood Mac's Man of the World (one of my all time faves) in a key scene that ultimately suggests those 97 minutes are about that most curious of things: male friendships.
Score: 8/10

Review: Watchmen

Watchmen is by far the most faithful adaptation of an Alan Moore comic yet to hit cinema screens – but does it trump The Dark Knight? Read on! Visually, this is the comic brought vividly and realistically to life, aided by fully realised sets and props rather than 90% blue screen and CGI.

It retains the essential structure of Moore’s work, telling the story in the order he set – meaning cross-cutting past, present and future narratives. The history of the Minutemen (the super hero team that predates the Watchmen) is superbly explained in the opening credit sequence after the death of The Comedian.

There are some nice additions by Snyder and the script adapters: a certain photograph in The Comedian’s apartment, the nods to Strangelove and Apocalypse Now, and some unexpected musical choices.

Rightly or wrongly, Rorschach (played with conviction by Jackie Earle Haley) is very much the crowd favourite of the piece – but much more so than in the comic. In choosing to excise some of his less charming traits and beliefs, Rorschach becomes a pint-sized Dirty Harry – with all the best lines.

Doc Manhattan is well-realised, cock and all, with Billy Crudup successfully conveying what little humanity is left within Big Blue.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan hints at the cynicism within The Comedian, but in so much that the character is seen only ever as someone else’s memory, there is little room for him to make an impact.

Matthew Goode brings an appropriately emotionless arrogance to Ozymandias, the most intelligent man in the world who also happens to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl’s impotence, sense of failure and lack of confidence is almost caught perfectly by Patrick Wilson – but I sensed something lacking in his performance, as if he didn’t believe in the material at all times.

Indeed, there’s a sense that everyone’s trying so hard to be faithful to the source that they bring none of themselves to the project and so it lacks the spark of life. This is not helped by the best actors being in the most unfeeling/darkest roles; while Rorschach is the work’s black heart, Laurie/Silk Spectre – and her relationships with Doc Manhattan and Dan – should be the emotional core of the work (often her reactions lead the audience in the comic) and I’m afraid while Malin Ackerman carries off the look (boy does she!), she fails to give weight to the character’s emotions (notwithstanding that the decision seems to have been taken to make Laurie less hysterical than in the comic).

The decision to re-work some elements of the original story are right, and the streamlining of the story to an acceptable run-time is hard to fault, but the question remains: would the story have more relevance, re-positioned in time to more or less the current day (like, say, The Dark Knight)?

The heavy weight of expectation on this movie was such that the end result could never live up to it. Ultimately the greatest adaptation of Watchmen is the one each and every reader, comic in hand, envisions in their own mind.

Nevertheless, Snyder and his team have tried – and if they have fallen short of glory, it’s not for lack of trying.

There are so many great scenes from the comic that are realised so well, I was compelled to punch the air at least once – which is more than can be said for the likes of From Hell or LXG.

Like Dark Knight, this is muscular, tough stuff (the comic’s gorier elements transferred intact), but Watchmen doesn’t quite scale the same heights.
Score: 7.5/10

Review: Gran Torino

Gran Torino is quite a different beast to Clint Eastwood’s riveting Oscar-bait Changeling, but is as enjoyable, challenging and relevant – and marks the Man With No Name out as simply the best US director currently working, his ability to move between genres unmatched.

Critical shorthand dictates that GT is Dirty Harry redeemed – and breaking the story down to its pure basics, that’s true, but it’s so much more than that. That summary doesn’t reveal the humour, the love of life, the tragedy that Clint allows the film to revel in.

Briefly, Clint is Walt Kowalski, a recently widowed Korean war vet, having to come to terms, Victor Meldrew-style, with a world changing so fast around him that he simply can’t comprehend, can’t make the imaginative leap that good prevails over change; his first and last resort is bitter retrenchment.

And from that, again Victor Meldrew-style, comes the comedy, which no doubt has helped the film’s word of mouth in the US. Every time you think Clint’s verging on ham, the script turns and forces him to default to his game face: he may be 78, but when he’s aiming an M1 rifle at you, you know he knows how to use it.

You see, Walt is old school – he is as racist as that relation you don’t like talking to at family gatherings because of their outdated views. Making things worse for him are his neighbours: Hmongs, the Koreans who helped the US in the war it should be noted, but to Walt they are just the old enemy.

Of course, the inevitable culture clash is bridged by the common enemy – the local gang. Which is not to say that the film demonises gang culture – it’s comedic unravelling of older male relationships clearly draws parallels between the bravado of the gangs (whatever their colour or creed) and the unspoken bond between vets and their own coded language.

The tragedy of the collected bravado sets in relatively late in the piece – and if it strikes a discordant note, I’m tempted to say that Clint’s just being realistic. And the hints are there that the key change, the shift in tone is coming.

Much of the symbolism is hard to discuss without giving away the story, but suffice to say it’s not overplayed.

The supporting cast are uniformly excellent – and the Gran Torino itself is gorgeous.

Tom Stern, who performed such a beautiful job lensing Changeling, does another knock-out job here, while Kyle Eastwood reveals a talent for haunting scores very much in his father’s style.

Ultimately what sets GT apart is simply how enjoyable and spry it is – one suspects its lightness of touch will render it endlessly watchable. It was Stanley Kubrick who mused that the most effective easy to get a serious message across to an audience is through comedy – when you’re laughing, you’re guard is down and, QED, your mind is more receptive.

If this does turn out to be Clint’s final hurrah in front of the camera, then a more fitting epitaph I can’t imagine. Hey, it even includes him singing…
Score: 9/10