Enough with playing history’s side men: Michael Sheen has a fine time as an obnoxious soccer coach in the 1970s period piece “The Damned United.”
Sheen — who played David Frost in “Frost/Nixon” and Tony Blair in “The Queen,” both of which were written by this film’s screenwriter Peter Morgan — is the center of attention this time. He’s Brian Clough, a blindingly arrogant ex-soccer star who takes over the Leeds United team in 1974, when their beloved coach (Colm Meaney) has been promoted to the generalship of the English team.
Clough tells his players everything they’ve been doing is wrong and resolves to cure them of their filthy playing habits. They growl as his assistant (Timothy Spall) sees disaster coming.
Though the character’s strutting self-destruction and Sheen’s delightfully un-ingratiating performance make the film watchable, particularly for Anglophiles and footie fans, Clough is (to Americans, anyway) one of the most obscure figures ever to inspire a biopic. His brief tenure may have been fraught, but it was also a tiny thing, and the “rivalry” with the Meaney figure is basically all in his head.
As the two coaches head for a faceoff in a climactic live TV interview, writer Morgan starts to seem like a rip-off — of himself.
Running time: 109 minutes. Rated R (profanity ). At the Lincoln Square, the Union Square.