The title is a dead giveaway: "Invictus," which opens today, will be a simplistic, but highly dramatic movie, like practically all movies that bear Clint Eastwood's fingerprints. It will show a world where there is a wide chasm between good people and evil people, and the good people will win, but the evil people will become better because of the influence of the good people.
The poem, which all school children had to learn when I was a child, is by William Ernest Henley, and it begins, "Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be, For my unconquerable soul." Later, it notes, "My head is bloody but unbowed," and it concludes, "I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul."
Given those lines and Eastwood as director and a masterly performance by Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, we immediately see the arc of the film. And, of course, there is a sports connection, tied into the winning of the World Rugby Cup by South Africa in 1995. The Springboks, the national champs, had been a white-only team, pointed in their policies of exclusion. But Mandela, a new president, convinced Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon, very hunky) that the team could do wonders for the country if it won the world title.
That neatly turns "Invictus" into a sports movie, with hours (or so it seemed) of scrums and kicks and players running with a ball. And then, of course, there is the title match between the Springboks and the New Zealand Blacks, and that takes a long time, too. But you already have enough information to decide who won the match.
Along the way, there are heart-warming scenes of the Springboks conducting a rugby clinic for little South African kids from the shanty towns, and the incumbent white bodyguards of the former president learning to work with the incoming black bodyguards of the Mandela administration.
Freeman is wonderful; he inhabits Mandela, and if he had been blessed with a better script than the one Tony Peckham wrote, he might have been even better. But for someone who likes rugby and adores heart-warming, here's a holiday treat.
Opens today at multiple theaters.
–Joe
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I can’t wait to watch this movie. Morgan Freeman is so talented.