INVICTUS

“INVICTUS” (Morgan Freeman & Matt Damon)

Clint Eastwood & Morgan Freeman team up yet again, this time with Clint staying behind the camera & the results aren’t nearly as entertaining as their last outing, “Million Dollar Baby”. It is a good film – Interesting & entertaining; but way too many rugby scenes make it a little boring. Not that rugby is as boring as soccer or baseball, but the way Eastwood filmed the games, it comes across as being dull. The rules are never explained - & they could have & should have been since the black secret service men that were hired to protect Mandela had no idea how the game was played & the white secret service men kept trying to get them interested. Even when the ‘Springbokkes’ play for the Rugby World Cup, one black officer looks at his white partner & asks “What happened?” You’d think by then they would have picked up the basic rules!
The film is the story of Nelson Mandela’s life AFTER he is released from prison. Morgan Freeman plays him as a cross between Shawshank Redemption’s ‘Red’ & Ben Kingsley’s ‘Ghandi’ (& sometimes sounding exactly like a typical Morgan Freeman voiceover instead of the president of South Africa)
I say that because it’s true – I’ve loved Morgan Freeman in almost everything he’s been in (We won’t mention ‘Wanted’, I’m sure he regrets that role as much as I regretted spending money on it) but "Invictus" just didn't have that ‘magic spark’ that I felt from his other collaborations with Eastwood.
Matt Damon has been mentioned as a Supporting Actor possibility & I don’t see that either; He really doesn’t have a lot to offer as S.A. rugby team captain Francois Doppleganger(I really don’t know what his last name was, let’s just go with that)
He grunts as he plays rugby; he gets invited to ‘tea’ with the president; Mandela tells him to inspire greatness in himself & his team; He gets his parents tickets to the big game; He plays rugby & grunts a lot... I’m not saying he isn’t convincing enough, but that’s really not an Oscar caliber ROLE as far as I’m concerned.
Mandela is portrayed as a fairly simple man with an equally simplistic philosophy; ‘just keep smiling’. The problem is he has just taken control of a hornet’s nest of a country divided & even his backers question his ability to lead his countrymen into making their country ‘great’. He chooses to make the Springbokkes, the South African rugby team his pet peeve & invokes the team captain (Damon) to win the world cup & unite the people.
“Invictus” is the title of the poem Mandela would often repeat to himself during his nearly 30 years of imprisonment. He passes this along to Francois, along with the request that his players learn the words to the National Anthem (Since all the blacks can easily tell they’re just moving their lips incoherently)
It’s almost fairy-tale like in its simplicity - & who knows how much of it came from ‘reality’? Maybe that’s why it didn’t strike a grand chord with me; there’s nothing bombastic about this film – the racism is underplayed; the unrest is underplayed & the rugby is underplayed (Too many field goals, not enough touchdowns)
It would have helped to have the rules explained, if just to know why sometimes they could pick the ball up & toss it to a teammate & sometimes they’d have to huddle together & grunt at the opposing team... It’s hard to get excited over a game when you have no idea what’s going on, Clint. As Columbus from ‘Zombieland’ would say, that should be ‘Rule #1’
Yet, in the end, I connected with the story – You’d have to be a racist or a zombie not to – the white & black South Africans coming together to root for the team wearing the apartheid colours. It WAS moving, but the trip to the finale wasn’t nearly as satisfying as I was hoping it would be. Eastwood has been on a nice roll in his latter career of acting & directing, & I wouldn’t say that he stumbles here – It’s much better than “Flags Of Our Fathers” – so if they decide to give him an Academy Award nomination for this to make up for snubbing him last year for both “Gran Torino” & “Changeling” I won’t have a problem with that decision...