Invictus

Clint Eastwood has made an audience-pleaser with real-life sports movie Invictus. At stage center is Morgan Freeman playing Nelson Mandela who, after the collapse of apartheid in South Africa and his release from a 27-year prison sentence on a charge of sedition, gets elected as the country’s president. To help boost national pride and close the ugly racial divide between blacks and whites, Mandela inspires the captain of the nation’s losing rugby team (Matt Damon) to go for greatness, climaxing in a rousing 1995 Rugby World Cup Match showdown between South Africa and New Zealand.

Although it’d be naïve to believe that racial tensions in South Africa were waved away by a rugby match, there’s no denying that the film depicts a transformative time in politics. With solid direction, good performances and a dignified screenplay by Anthony Peckham based on John Carlin’s book Playing the Enemy, Invictus (taken from the title of an 1875 poem beloved by Mandela) is admirable and enjoyable, if not deep or incisive. Damon convincingly tones down his movie-star wattage to better blend into the team mentality of the ensemble. Freeman, realizing a long-held dream of playing Mandela, is charming, charismatic and noble. Eastwood, who filmed the movie in South Africa, approaches things in a spare, thoroughly professional style without moralizing about apartheid or bogging down the action by explaining the rules of rugby. In these days of moviemaking excess, that held-back, classic technique itself amounts to something radical.