While the movie sensibly focuses on a relatively short period of Clough's career to tell its story, there's no escaping the liberties it takes with what actually happened, something that is likely to make soccer fans who know their history tune out.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 29, 2022

Even if you have next to no interest in football, The Damned United is enormously entertaining.

| Nov 21, 2020

A superb sports film, based on the best-selling book by David Peace.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 20, 2020

The Damned United proves that Sheen is fully capable of carrying his own film.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 11, 2019

The searing drama amasses its considerable force the old-fashioned way; it earns its wings by virtue of impeccable performances, strong direction and a stellar screenplay.

| Dec 1, 2018

It's entertaining even if you don't quite follow all of the intricacies of the game, mostly thanks to the boisterous cast.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 1, 2018

The Damned United is a populist - at times, almost cartoonish - attempt to make comprehensible the story behind Brian Clough's ill-fated 44-day tenure at Leeds United.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 3, 2018

For once we have a movie in which learning humility --learning that ambition can be as self-defeating a force as laziness given faulty motivation -- is the point of the film and not some short stop on the way to a thunderous comeback.

| Oct 8, 2018

Moves along crisply with, mercifully, very little on-pitch football and many beautifully crafted, touching moments.

| Aug 29, 2018

The story should have added up to an interesting and exciting movie, but it didn't for me. It was not due to Sheen's acting, but rather to a boring and confusing script.

| Jan 17, 2018

The Damned United eliminates the existential anguish and pain that propelled Peace's novel, and curtails its lowering style.

| Oct 20, 2014

as foreign for American audiences as a story about one of Billy Martin's stints with the Yankees would be in the U.K.

| Jan 31, 2011

If soccer is a Shakespearean drama, then The Damned United is Richard III.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 27, 2010

Michael Sheen has played vampires and werewolves, but works up his most insatiable bloodlust as Brian Clough in this sharply observed, superbly acted drama that realizes sports forms as nasty a symbiotic relationship with a nation's people as politics.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 25, 2010

Morgan, Hooper and Sheen have crafted a moving, funny and loving tribute to the spirit of a man who effortlessly defined the spirit of the greatest sport ever.

| Aug 9, 2010

A provocative, darkly funny and particularly damning character study of hubris couched in idealism.

| Apr 20, 2010

This slice of British football sports history won't have any cultural resonance for us Yanks... but the portrait of ambition and hubris run amok resonates in any arena...

| Mar 25, 2010

"The Damned United" is a fascinating look at a very complex man, both talented and tone-deaf, arrogant and insecure, caring and hard-hearted.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 12, 2010

Finds its riveting story in the locker-room and board-room wranglings of competitive team leaders, and dissects them with documentary-style precision.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 23, 2009

Refusing to devolve into a routine sports flick (see Invictus), The Damned United is instead more interested in the off-field clashes than the on-field skirmishes.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 19, 2009