Film Review: Invictus (2009)
Clint Eastwood, having ostensibly bid farewell to acting in Gran Torino the previous year, continues his tireless march behind the camera with this account of Nelson Mandela's early presidency. Invictus might well have secured Eastwood his third Academy Award—had James Cameron's Avatar not rendered all competition rather moot before the season even began.
Set in the immediate aftermath of apartheid's dismantling, the film finds Mandela (Morgan Freeman) freshly installed as South Africa's first black president, presiding over a nation whose wounds remain far from healed. His scheme to bridge the chasm between races borrows rather obviously from the playbook of sports diplomacy—specifically, the manner in which Croatian football manager Ćiro Blažević attempted to unify Bosnia and Herzegovina through national team allegiance. The difficulty lies in Mandela's chosen vehicle: rugby union, the one sport in which South Africa maintains international standing, yet one thoroughly despised by the black majority. The national side, the Springboks, is dominated by Afrikaners and plays abysmally. Nevertheless, Mandela sets about inspiring captain François Pienaar (Matt Damon) to reach for the impossible: victory at the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
Freeman, who had long before Barack Obama's ascendancy conditioned audiences to accept the notion of a black occupant in White House, inhabits the role of the world's most revered statesman with the ease of a fish in water. The same cannot be said for Damon, who proves rather less convincing as an Afrikaner rugby player. Indeed, the supporting characters are uniformly weak and underdeveloped, much like Anthony Peckham's screenplay, which strips the narrative of any proper antagonists or dramatic stakes. There is scant tension when Mandela is presented from the outset as a supreme, unimpeachable authority—head of state whose word is, by definition, final. As the film progresses, it descends into the hoariest conventions of the Hollywood sports picture, deploying cheap tricks unlikely to fool discerning viewers.
What renders Invictus not merely watchable but genuinely engaging is Freeman's superlative performance, bolstered by Eastwood's reliable direction. His unobtrusive yet effective craftsmanship manages to lend an almost epic quality to what is otherwise a rather banal, "safe" tale of prejudice overcome. The result is a film that is politically and professionally correct—though one suspects that is rather faint praise.
Rating: 6/10
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