the damned united (d. tom hooper; w. peter morgan)

There's a moment when what one takes to be Nigel Clough, a fine midfielder in his day, is sitting in the back of his father's car and reading something like Shoot magazine. It's 1974 and he must be about the same age as me, an 8 year old absorbed in the farcical detail of football. Eight year old's tend to know quite a lot, more than they're given credit for, and one wonders what young Nigel made of his dad's leading Leeds to their worst start in many a season, including a home defeat to QPR, sadly not featuring footage of Stan Bowles, the one man Brian has told his bunch of Leeds terriers to stop. Bowles, so my memory tells me, had a dissolute flair, something he had in common with Clough, the subject of the movie. It's the kind of flair which seems less and less common in the British game (which was always distrustful of flair) - names like Currie, Hudson, Marsh, Osgood etc used to light up our culture, a direct link to perhaps the last true flair player of them all, Gascoigne, as though brilliance, the capacity to make the jaw drop in wonder, is no longer the preserve of the British psyche.

Sadly, Hooper's movie echoes this trend. The idea is interesting enough, but this feels in the end like a workmanlike, mid-table kind of movie, run by a cautious board more worried about the perils of dropping down the leagues (doing a Leeds or a Derby or Forest) than tilting for glory. There's one scene in the film, when Clough rails at the Derby chairman, which explicitly refers to this kind of insipid cultural approach, with Clough pointing out that without his genius Derby would still be scraping around in the then second division. That the script should put its finger on the creative conundrum which links both cinema and football; the need to balance ambition with caution on the financial playing field; only for the film to then retreat from Clough's challenge, seems perhaps indicative of the culture we inhabit. Smart enough to know the rules, but never brave enough to break them.

Elsewhere, Morgan's script is functional but rarely flies. Odd notes of exposition sneak in (as Clough explains his rivalry with Revie to Taylor for the benefit not of Taylor, who surely knows this, but the audience), and a noticeable trope continues to dominate the narrative, of two powerful men headed for inevitable confrontation (The Deal; Frost/ Nixon; Last King of Scotland). However, in this instance, the Clough/ Revie rivalry feels contrived (which is not to say that it is); a somewhat clunky narrative tool to explain Clough's maverick ambition. As even the most casual follower of English football knows, Clough was in another league to Revie. Even if he needed the impetus of the rivalry, it is only a mechanism of his ambition, not the root (much as Ferguson loves to stimulate rivalries with any other manager who threatens him, from Wenger to Keegan). The scene which really seemed to reveal the serrated tension which made Clough tick was the one where he cannot bear to watch the match and hides away in the bowels of the stadium instead, agonising as the minutes pass. Here was a glimpse of the nervous tension which Clough channelled into his management; however the film's psychological portrait of Clough remained too skin deep, too thinly veined, to live up to the intensity this moment revealed.

Which takes us to Sheen's performance. Sheen's a clever actor, and a talented one. But the more of these turns that he does, the more one starts to wonder if he's really a soulful one. Perhaps he is, but at the moment it feels as though the mimicry, the details and the finickity ambition to embody the subject he's playing are in danger of getting in the way of his engagement with that subject. His Clough feels like looking at a near flawless reproduction of the real thing: it's very impressive, but it's never quite the real thing, and if anything the flawlessness draws attention to that gap that exists between the impression and the reality. Rather than involving the audience in the story it acts as a kind of Brechtian alienation technique, and I'm not convinced that's the object of the exercise, or if it is I'm not convinced the director realised this.

As much British cinema seems to do now, The Damned United indulges in a nostalgic vision of Britain before the dawn of Sky Sports or the Premier League, when stadiums were run down and men were men. The local colour has its moments, and there is a sense of a lost England, one where Derby County could win the league. However, within this context, the way it affected the characterisation seemed unconvincing, nowhere more so than in the depiction of the fag-smoking Leeds team, who seemed like a bunch of Dickensian raggamuffins, with their surly attitudes and curly locks. The notion seemed to be that back in those more innocent days, you could become the best team in the country through sheer thuggishness, and footballing ability was a secondary requisite. Leeds under Revie were just the biggest thugs on the block. Even if there is a germ of truth in this, the whole thing is drawn out and caricatured to absurd levels. And it also conveniently ignores the fact, as noted above, that back in the day, there were players of remarkable flair, individuals, who flowered in the then first division. The pathos of what has been lost might have been all the stronger had the script found a way to connect with the fate of Clough's teams in the 21st Century. And talking of pathos, if that's the right word, there seemed to be some going with the end note stating that Clough (and Taylor) were the first and only British managers to retain the European cup, on a day when Ferguson was poised but failed to emulate them. It does seem in some way indicative of the film's weaknesses that the moments that were really powerful and evocative were the documentary shots at the end of the strange duo on the bench, or being interviewed, moments when the full extent of Clough's almost disconcerting, messianic genius finally shone through.

elite squad (d. jose padilha, w. andre batista, braulio mantovani)

Elite Squad deals with the way in which the police attempt to tackle the drugs war in Rio's favelas. The film was created out of Padilha's original project, which was to create a documentary about BOPA, the elite Brazilian anti-narcotic squad, which some see as a paramilitary unit. Elite Squad was the most expensive feature ever made in Brazil. It has provoked national debate, commercial success and international acclaim.

Padilha has quite a few axes to grind. He wants his audience to understand who the officers of BOPA are, how they work, and why they might be necessary. He also wants middle class Brazilian drug users to take stock of the part they play in their country's drug war, which is by and large concealed in the no-go favelas. Finally he wants, and succeeds, in making these issues accessible and cinematic.

Elite Squad, in spite of its acknowledged intellectual perspective, is a high octane piece of cinema making. On the one hand, Padilha and his team capture the vivid, restless energy of the favelas; the comical corruption of the Rio police force, and the violent excesses of the drug war. On the other hand, he succeeds in slipping in a sequence where one of his three principle protagonists, the nerdish, black law student, Matias, gives a succinct appraisal of Foucault's position on the mechanisms of power within society.

Padilha's film suggests that you can have it all. It is possible to make intelligent, 'socially conscious', commercial, dramatic cinema. All that's required is the verve and ambition to pull it off. The fact that the film caused such a stir within Brazil would no doubt appeal to Foucault himself. For so long the holy grail of politically minded artists has been the creation of a work of art which might have some influence on society. Illegally downloaded copies of Padilha's film were doing the rounds long before it opened. The director found himself accused of making a fascist film, hero-worshipping BOPA, whilst being sued by BOPA for defamation at the same time.

One of the fascinating aspects of the movie is the way in which it finds the line that exists between documentary and fiction. Padilha realised that there was no way he was going to be allowed to film the things he'd been told occurred in real life. BOPA's habit of torturing suspects and summarily executing others was never going to be captured in a documentary. Neither were the antics of the drugs lords, nor, in all likelihood, the extent to which psychological stress affected BOPA's members. For all the film's violence, the scene where Captain Nascimiento walks into his home and, out of the blue, shouts at his wife that he runs the show, remains one of the most powerful. Wagner Moura, who plays Nascimiento, has a passing resemblance to Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. His narration, which holds the film together as it tells the story of how he came to select one of Matias or his friend Neto to succeed him in his job, giving him a get-out clause to spend more time with his family, also echoes Liotta's in Scorcese's film.

Elite Squad is one of the rare films that succeeds in emulating Scorcese's sinuous, energetic style of film-making. It gives evidence of a director who's brazen enough to believe he can seize hold of the big issues affecting his society, then describe them in a way that's so gripping, people will want to go and see the film. Thereby having to face issues they would usually run a mile from. This is anti-escapism cinema, executed with remarkable, compelling flair.

gone baby gone (d. ben affleck, w. affleck & aaron stockard)

The film opens, more or less, and closes, more or less, with shots of locals on the streets of Boston. When Affleck's film feels at its strongest is when he captures the look and the feel of that nowhere land in the United States where people are far from beautiful and the streets offer little to inspire. The grimier the better, and in the opening 45 minutes or so, the dialogue matches the tone in its ambition to pin down the skankiness of the slouching States.

Affleck's direction in the opening hour is surprisingly supple, and he knows how to get the most out of his outrageously talented brother, whose performance was the only reason I allowed my arm to be twisted of a Saturday night to go and see the film. I've already mentioned the talents of Casey - he has a screen presence which should end up putting most of his competitors in the shade. Oddly you can always spot a great actor by their ability to slur or mumble their lines and still make them sound like they possess all the meaning in the world. (Not necessarily great for the screenwriter but in the end we don't go to the cinema to listen to words but to look at faces, as Barthes observed.)

Sadly, after a while, the plot takes over, a plot that becomes increasingly tortuous and ultimately melodramatic. Any film which casts Morgan Freeman nowadays has to deal with the fact that the minute he appears he exudes a kind of benighted, Mandela-esque dignity which will occupy the film's moral epicentre. Although Gone Baby Gone chooses to subvert this it doesn't get away from the fact that his presence means we know we have slipped sideways from badlands Boston to the world of 'moral consequences' (ie Hollywood). Once the dramatic effects of this change of scene kick in the film is on a slow ride towards mediocrity, having promised rather more.