Cantona steals the show
Review
The United Way (E, 90 mins) Directed by Mat Hodgson Reviewed by James Croot ★★★★
This is either inspired, or insipid, timing. Releasing a documentary celebrating Manchester’s Red Devils’ finest moments and extolling its virtues as reflecting the ‘‘community’’ and being part of the city’s soul, in the wake of highprofile protests against the more than 140-year-old football club’s current American owners and their attempts to join a European Super League.
Fortunately, documentarian Mat Hodgson (whose previous subjects have included boxers Roberto Duran and Ricky Hatton and the beleaguered London football club Queens Park Rangers) isn’t offering a soup-to-nuts look at the organisation that began life as Newton Heath in 1878.
Instead, it’s fascinating dive into the club’s most storied years (interestingly, not necessarily its most successful), from the late 1950s to the heartstopping events of May 26, 1999.
What makes it even more compelling is our guide – enigmatic United star, inscrutable artiste and cultural icon Eric Cantona.
He proves to be a most erudite and enlightening host, whether it’s musing on the importance of the ill-fated band of brothers – the Busby Babes (eight of whom died when a plane crashed attempting to take off from Munich airport in 1958) – or reflecting on his own highs and lows during his five-year tenure wearing the first team’s No 7.
As well as helping canny manager Alex Ferguson to lead them to four Premier League titles and league and FA Cup ‘‘doubles’’, Cantona also managed to get himself banned from the game for nine months in 1995 for kung-fu kicking an abusive Crystal Palace fan and delivering a series of memorably confounding press conferences.
While you’ll still have to make up your own mind about what he meant by ‘‘when seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea’’, the French footballer is surprisingly open about his time in England, praising Sir Alex and the club for sticking by him and lamenting of the incident itself, that ‘‘I would have loved to have kicked him harder’’.
Yet with others claiming he’d left the game stained, even Cantona admits his dream became rotten, resulting in him eventually walking away altogether at the end of the 1997 season.
Many other former players and club officials have their say, flight attendant Rosemary Blakeley gives a compelling first-person account of the Munich disaster and politicians and musicians chime in regarding the club’s importance to ‘‘the home of the industrial revolution’’ and its people.
You’ll see amazing footage of the holy trinity of Bobby Charlton, George Best and Denis Law, watch the fans’ passionate reaction to their unthinkable fall into the second division in 1974, hear a still bitter 1970s manager Tommy Docherty grouse about being sacked for an affair with the club physio’s wife and laugh as his successor ‘‘Flash’’ Ron Atkinson dismisses the club’s offer of a Rover as his wheels (‘‘I’ve already got a dog called Charlie, let’s talk cars’’).
Then there’s Scottish star Gordon Strachan, who recalls the drinking culture within the team before ‘‘Fergie’’ arrived, and how the one time he agreed to go out with the boys, he ended up in the boot of club captain Bryan Robson’s car.
It’s stories like that about infamous moments and famous victories that make The United Way such a joy to watch, even if you loathe the Old Trafford occupants and what their ownership represents today. If you love football, you should definitely seek this out.
The United Way is in cinemas now.