INVICTUS

WARNER BROS. 

RELEASED 5 February 2010

Nelson Mandela has been asking Morgan Freeman to portray him for years. For some time, it looked like Mandela’s own autobiography would form the basis, but author John Carlin’s book ‘Playing the Enemy’ about South Africa winning the 1995 Rugby World Cup became the centrepiece of a movie about bringing together black and white citizens of a post-apartheid country.

As Mandela (Morgan Freeman) begins his tenure as President, he sees the need for South Africa to have an event that will bond the country together. The Rugby World Cup is just a year away, and as host nation, South Africa automatically qualify. Which is just as well, because Mandela watches them get thrashed by a rampant England side, with black members in the crowd cheering on the English, having grown up hating the all-white ‘Springboks’ team representing their country. Calling the captain, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), to his presidential office, he asks Pienaar to strive for greatness, citing a poem (‘Invictus’ by William Earnest Henley) that kept him going through the long years in jail. The following year sees training sessions take place in black townships in a major PR offensive, while the team is pushed ever harder by a determined Pienaar, as well as the inspirational Mandela.

Director Clint Eastwood had his biggest hit for years in 2009 with ‘Gran Torino’. Following similarly-praised movies like ‘Changeling’ and ‘Million Dollar Baby’, Clint seems to have a knack for getting it right time after time. Compared to his recent output, ‘Invictus’ is a failure. Morgan Freeman is good value as Mandela, appropriating a convincing South African accent and generating the immense aura of the man. Matt Damon doesn’t do quite so well with the accent, but it’s passable, and even though he’s bulked up a bit for the role, he’s not as imposing as Pienaar nor does he really look like he can play rugby. However, the rugby is the biggest problem with the film regardless of Damon’s skills. It’s not exciting, it doesn’t feel genuine, and you get absolutely no sense of a tournament taking place. Where is the footage of the other games? The whole thing is spread over a month, but you get no sense of building support for the team. When a major sporting tournament takes place (of which rugby is the third biggest in the world after football and the Olympics), the favourites see their entire populace whipped into a frenzy of excitement. ‘Invictus’ attempts to show this excitement with an empty street and a couple of pubs watching the game on the TV. There seems to be a huge lack of extras in the film. This is an entire country we’re talking about! There should be endless shots of people in every situation imaginable watching the game. As a final criticism of the rugby, aside from the fact that Eastwood cannot inject any excitement into the action, the sound department has decided to add ‘swishing’ and ‘whooshing’ noices to the ball in the final game, which makes the action look comical.

Any special effects work in the film (such as crowd scenes and a low-flying jumbo jet) looks shoddy, and the songs used on the soundtrack are also cheesy and obvious (one song is called’ Colourblind’!)

There’s nothing wrong with the script, but knowing that Mandela actually used Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 speech ‘The Man in the Arena’ to inspire Pienaar rather than ‘Invictus’ seems like a huge liberty taken by the film-makers. The film definitely works best when we’re concentrating on characters like Mandela’s black and white security team, who have a few amusing scenes as they learn to get along with each other. Although the first half of the film is the strongest, it’s still pretty routine and unsurprising, and never seems to really capture the flavour of mid-Nineties South Africa.

‘Invictus’ is surprisingly weak in both excitement and drama, and Clint Eastwood’s direction and dramatic choices seem to be where the major faults lie. It’s a shame that Morgan Freeman got to play such a great role in such an underwhelming movie. How does anybody make a Mandela film underwhelming?

TWO OUT OF FIVE