Review: Invictus

In his 80th year, Clint Eastwood doesn't seem like he's going to run out of steam any time soon. After impressing with his last four outings (Flags of Our Fathers/Letters from Iwo Jima, Chanegling and Gran Torino) you would think he would mis-step but no Invictus is just as good as these previous films. The film revolves around Nelson Mandela's first years as president and in particular his attempts to unite South Africa during the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Mandela along with Sprinbok captain Francois Pienaar unite in a campaign to make the black Africans root for the Sprinboks during the World Cup. As we see throughout the film there is an uneasy alliance between both sides of the country even Mandela's security force is now mixed and his original guards are ultra-suspicious of the men who once bullied them. As the film goes on and draws to its conclusion we see that Mandela's plans seem to work and the final scenes in particular see the unity that has happened thanks to the World Cup.

As Mandela, Freeman greatly deserves his Oscar nomination, although at times he can't keep up the accent he still is able to portray the man with great dignity and gives him an almost godlike aura. I for one am not impressed with Matt Damon's Francois who often seems like he stays on the outside of any debates and really doesn't inspire throguhout the film so I'm unsure of all the plaudits he's been recieving. The better performances come from Tony Kgoroge as the head of Mandela's security and Adjoa Andoh as his loyal secretary. Eastwood could be accused of hero-worshipping Mandela at times and apart from a small bit concerning his personal life not much is made of his family situation which is a shame.

This is almost exclusively a film about Nelson Mandela and rugby and non-rugby fans (I include myself in that category) will be greatly put off by the 30 minute plus action that the game recieves not all of it is necessary in telling the story and it ramps up the runtime. But overall this is an impressive re-telling of an event that reuntied a country and Eastwood marks himself out as the right man to tell this story.