The Damned United

The Damned United dramatizes Brian Clough's brief and turbulent spell as manager of Leeds United in 1974. Clough arrives at the reigning English champions after Don Revie leaves the club to take charge of the national team, but he does so without his longtime assistant Peter Taylor, who has declined to join him. Clough makes no secret of his contempt for the aggressive, cynical style Leeds played under Revie, and his relationship with the players deteriorates almost immediately. The film looks back at Clough's earlier managerial career to show where that hostility came from and how much he depended on Taylor's partnership. The story covers his forty-four days in charge.

Tom Hooper directed, working from a screenplay by Peter Morgan, and the film sits second in Hooper's filmography, between Red Dust and The King's Speech. Michael Sheen plays Clough, with Timothy Spall as Taylor and Colm Meaney as Revie; the cast also includes Jim Broadbent, Maurice Roëves and Stephen Graham. It is a British and American production with a budget of 10 million dollars.

Audience response has been solid: on IMDb it holds 7.5 from around 48,000 votes and on TMDB 7.2 from roughly 726 votes. A critics' rating of 7.5 from 138 reviews puts professional assessments roughly level with the general audience's.