INVICTUS Review - The Movie Messenger

Invictus is Clint Eastwood’s newest film starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon.  It is based on the book: Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed a Nationby John Carlin.  

Freeman plays former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, during his early time in office.  For those that don’t know the history behind the man, Mandela was an activist in South Africa during a time of apartheid, a law  established in 1948 where South Africans were segregated into groups by race.  He was imprisoned for 27 years until his release in February 1990, where four years later he became the country’s first black president, finally ending apartheid. 

The story begins here. 

Freeman’s Mandela is caring, calm, and confident, and forsees a unified nation in his sight, but the country remains divided, and unlike Mandela, blacks haven’t forgiven whites for their crimes against them, and tension remains between them.  Mandela is reminded of his divided country while attending a Springboks game, South Africa’s struggling rugby team. 

When Mandela learns South Africa will be holding the 1995 Rugby World Cup in one year’s time, he meets with the team’s captain, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon) in hopes he can inspire him and his struggling team.  If South Africa can win, it could possibly breathe new life to a torn country, bringing everyone together and united. 

Invictus doesn’t really focus on Mandela like most would think.  Rather than focusing on politics, it focuses on the morals and changes Mandela wanted to bring to his country from the bottom of his heart. 

There are no surprises here.  Eastwood directs this movie with precision, and the script is quite historically accurate, so if you’re familiar who won the '95 Rugby World Cup, the story is not much of a surprise. Invictus isn’t about surprises, which is why I didn’t understand Eastwood’s constant attempts to scare the audience with possible attacks on Mandela, but come to think of  it, it most likely happened.  Here, these were real threats that happened to the real Nelson Mandela during his presidency. 

Clint Eastwood may have brought us a clichéd sports movie with an unlikely sport disguised as a biopic about Nelson Mandela.  When I say clichéd, I only mean we’ve seen this sports movie before with other sports, maybe even we’re more familiar with – but we root for this Springboks team, just as any South African did almost fifteen years ago.  The vision of Nelson Mandela brought a country together, and the vision of Clint Eastwood has made us appreciate that vision.

written by Anthony J. Gomez, The Movie Messenger - 12/13/09