"Invictus" Movie Review

"Invictus" (Unconquerable)
My 0-10 rating: 6
Genre: Drama.
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenplay: Anthony Peckham, inspired by an 1875 poem by British writer William Ernest Henley and based on the John Carlin book, "Playing the Enemy."
Cast: Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon
Time: 2 hrs., 14 min.
Rating: PG (brief vulgarity)

Nelson Mandela for sports fans? Sounds unlikely but history and "Invictus" do it. It's not a biography, just a great story. But, truth be told, as dynamic movies go it's uninspired and, except for the crowd shots, wooden and without a compelling flow. Continuity is erratic, with many anemic scenes that express little of the world-shaking energy that's supposed to be happening. In a word, the film has its spots but generally it's not nearly as big as its events.

I felt no rising tension during this film; a lot of talk of urgency but little urgency. Morgan Freeman, not surprisingly, fills and overflows every frame he's in. Matt Damon's, however, is just a necessary character in the story, empty as a personality.

The story of Mandela is well-known: the rebellious black hero released after 27 years from a cruelly white-racist South African prison in 1990, elected president of the country in 1994 to end the final throes of the inhuman system of apartheid.

Read the words of the 1875 William Ernest Henley poem that Mandela often recited to himself while imprisoned on Robben Island and became his lifelong inspiration: The key final lines were: "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul."

He was also the master of his own enormous intelligence, a man of towering spiritual moment when he decreed that his new presidency was not the time for revenge but for bringing together.

Soon following his election, there develops the amazing true story of how Nelson Mandela joins up with the captain of South Africa's rugby team in an effort to use the game to unite their country. Just elected president, Mandela (Morgan Freeman) is more than aware that his nation is a hotbed of revenge-seeking racism following the abandonment of apartheid. It could easily have slipped inexorably into civil war. It's a challenge of world-shaking importance.

It happens that Mandela loves rugby (from which our football was derived). But the current South African rugby team, the Springboks, is one of the worst teams going. Mandela becomes the team's one-man public relations booster though it has only one black player. Mandela focuses on it as he endeavors to create a "Rainbow Nation" to bring forth national reconciliation between blacks and whites. He prevents the National Sports Council from closing down the Springboks.

The nation's majority blacks, however, favor soccer, not rugby. Indeed, soccer was always that game described in Britain as a "gentleman's game played by hooligans" as opposed to rugby, beloved by white South Africans, as "a hooligan's game played by gentlemen." But the 1995 Rugby World Cup was beckoning. (Rugby -- see below for a general overview of the game's rules -- is very similar to American football in its general objectives, that is, to move a ball through tacklers and strategies to a goal line).

The new captain of the bedraggled Springboks -- the whole team being viewed contemptuously by the black population as a remnant of the hated apartheid -- is white Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), the wisdom of this move being much to the skepticism of Mandela's aides and to the bitter resistance of black-dominating public opinion. But Mandela makes it clear that he wants a diversified state.

Over fierce resistance at all levels, the rebuilding of the team with both blacks and whites begins, with a distinct eye toward the World Cup final against the New Zealand team, the All Blacks (named for its uniforms). That great match will involve about 18 minutes of screen time. It is during that game that Mandela's mixed security team will at last come to terms with South Africa as a fully integrated state.

That 18 minutes is also the only answer to why you're expected to be still seated. Up till then, you've had to endure sermonizing and the routine frustrations of Mandela's quest. You can yawn. But those final minutes are certainly as grandly spectacular as in any sports film.

Marty Meltz, http://www.martymoviereviews.com, was the 30-year movie critic for the New England Award-winning Maine Sunday Telegram, his column terminated 12/31/07 for budget cuts.

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