The Damned United

Time, surely, to check up on Michael Sheen's latest attempts at being Rory Bremner... has there ever been an actor so famed for impersonating real-life figures? I have to confess when I heard he was playing the role of football manager Brian Clough in a screen adaptation of David Peace's novel, I was astonished. I mean, he doesn't even look like the guy - or so I thought. And yet... he does. Sort of. No prosthetics at work here, folks, no fake hooter a la Nicole Kidman's turn in The Hours (and so probably no Oscar either) - instead... well, what exactly? I suppose it's just bloody good acting.

The boy done well, Brian
And it's not just Michael Sheen who deserves praise - there are fine performances here by Timothy Spall as Clough's right-hand man Peter Taylor (though if I were him I'd be a bit miffed that I was being played by someone quite so, ahem, plump as the good Mr Spall is right now); also by Jim Broadbent as the long-suffering chariman of Derby County, and Colm Meaney as Don Revie, Clough's nemesis and predecessor at Leeds United. Colm's comb-over deserves at least an Oscar nomination all by itself...

A game of two halves
I have to say I enjoyed the film immensely, helped at least in part by its relatively short running time (just over 90 minutes - how apt for a footy film). It's by no means perfect, as it seems to want to be both a light-hearted comedy and reflect some of the darker aspects that are the main meat of Peace's novel. But, at the end of the day (Brian), as many have pointed out already, the film is really a love story - the sort of macho, male bonding love that allows Taylor to feed Clough cheese and onion crisps whilst Brian drives the car, drinking Skol lager all the way. That's something to celebrate, surely?

Aye, but...
It pains me to say it but I do have to draw special attention (and not in a good way) to the performance of Stephen Graham as the diddy Scots hero and Leeds captain, Billy Bremner. Referee! Offside!! etc. I mean, I know that wee Billy was no great athlete but he wasn't the fat porker on screen here, unless my childhood memories of (say) Scotland v Zaire in the 1974 World Cup are deceiving me. And worse yet, Graham (a scouser) gives what is easily one of the worst Scottish accents you are ever, ever likely to hear. Ever. It's so bad, he could have been auditioning for the part of Scotty in the up-coming Star Trek remake. (A part which, incidentally, has gone instead to Simon Pegg... more on that story later.)

How's the maths?
Well, I was disappointed in one sense, in that there was little talk of football tactics or combinations - I had hoped for at least a bit of 4-3-3 stuff. And OK, they do bang on about the First "Division" and the Second "Division", but that doesn't count as a proper mention of mathematics. But, to be fair, there aren't many films around where, slap bang in the middle of the movie, someone comes flat out and asks a maths question, as Clough does of Taylor when he asks (albeit in the middle of a tirade of insults): "What's half of nothing?" And he gets the answer right...

It's not much, but we maths teachers have to take it where we find it. And, in a week where the First Minister of Scotland was apparently asked by a frustrated parent how you divide by nothing, I suppose things are perhaps looking up, in the division stakes at least. Or the "goes-intys", as many of our children prefer to call it.