Politics and sports come together decently

Rating: Null/10 (26 December 2009)

I don't like many of Eastwood's emotionally cloying films like "Million Dollar Baby" and "Gran Torino". Emotional harp strings are played frequently in those movies.
Invictus is quite different. The movie is a biopic but it's not a biopic, it's about one part of Mandela's life. It's a very small part, the 1995 Rugby World Cup which was held in South Africa. This is a risky move, but this is in fact better than doing a complete biopic of Mandela's life. I would compare this movie to last year's Frost/Nixon, it's a glimpse of the man's life, a part of his life deemed important not by the man himself but by his biographers.
Freeman is quite good but his accent is a bit flaky at times. Damon is alright as well but he doesn't have much to work with here as the captain of the South Africa Rugby squad. A lot of it is working up his teammates and convincing them that there is a political purpose behind their team winning.
There is still some manipulation here as there always in Eastwood's films. A plane flies over at one point and the music gets all ominous and tense. Your first thought is 'OH MY GOD, IT'S THE TERRORISTS' but it's subterfuge on Eastwood's part, as usual.
The musical score is also quite bad in a few places. Instead of going with a traditional instrumental score, there are bad pieces of modern adult contemporary music.
Overall it's a pretty decent movie and I liked Freeman in his role as Mandela, I can't imagine anyone else really taking on this role. Maybe there is a South African actor out there who could do it. There are South African actors in this movie and it's really quite hard to understand their accent at times.