Invictus the movie is based on the book by John Carlin (Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed a Nation) and stars Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and the movie begins with stock news bulletins from the 90s which show him being released from prison, and then moving on to showing the election lines stretching for miles with him winning and going into office. We start by seeing all the white people leaving the office of the president as they believe that their jobs will be taken away from them. Far from it. Mandela encourages them to stay knowing that his country cannot be rebuilt on the outside, if it doesn’t begin from within.
Matt Damon plays Francois Pienaar, the South African rugby captain who was leading his team when Mandela was elected president. After seeing Mandela try to reform his own office, we move to the playing field where we see the Springboks (SA) playing rugby against England where, quite frankly, we hammer the living daylights out of them! Pienaar is worried for his position in the SA team when the bosses become worried that their prized team needs a revamp, especially as they’re hosting the next world cup 12 months away.
What I loved about this film was that from the outset Eastwood laid out the fact that the country of South Africa was in big trouble. The black people had a new president that they had been allowed to vote in for the first time but that the majority of the white people were still very unhappy about it. But what the movie showed was how clever Nelson Mandela really was. These biopic movies can often be unbelievable with large chunks missed out of what really happened. But I think with Invictus, everything we needed to know was in the movie. It all happens quite quickly but then, the real events all happened within a year and since it’s true, you can’t really argue with the facts.
To sum up, this is a movie that I really enjoyed. If you like rugby, you’ll probably like this movie and they had the real Chester Williams giving technical advice on how the movie should be shot. Rugby isn’t really the main focus though, it’s just a chariot to carry the underlying story of Apartheid and rebuilding a broken nation. It was great to see a film being made that showed how a country and be rebuilt rather than destroyed.
Freeman was excellent and the perfect person to play Mandela. I can’t think of any actor who would have done him justice. I’m not sure Damon’s casting was spot on as I couldn’t see through his current Bourne style status that he has but he did a good job and his accent was superb throughout. The movie dragged in a couple of places but it is a Clint Eastwood film! I found it moving, inspiring and I’d love to see it again. I have no doubt you’ll see this movie appearing in schools for years to come to show the collapse of apartheid and what a great man Mandela really was. Will Clint Eastwood ever make a bad film? So far he hasn’t.
Invictus is released in UK cinemas 5th February. If you haven’t seen the trailer, you can check it out here and we also have footage from the press conference which you can watch in it’s entirety here.