College underdogs overcome the odds....without the padding

Rating: 3/10 (12 October 2015)

This is the same as every other identikit sporting movie - of the underdog overcoming the odds to triumph.
Predictable : The action/training scenes could be transposed from any college/ice hockey/baseball pitch in any number of tedious movies to the miraculously recovering South Africa . Just change the colour of the kits and remove the ludicrous protective padding and headgear and you have Invictus.
Clichéd : The cuts to the commentator who pops up to spell out the gigantic scale of the task ahead (for anyone too stupid to follow the plot) are laughable but, it seems, essential for any movie of this type.
The hugely mis-cast (again) Matt Damon as a mini-me of the South African team captain making the inspirational speeches in the scrum. The shots of 'ordinary' people watching it in bars and leaping from the sofas of their homes.
Nauseating : The 747 performing illegal manoeuvres a couple of hundred feet over the stadium. The old (white) presidential guards enjoying a jolly good game of rugby with the new (black)security detail in the grounds of the Presidential palace. Matt Damons' visit to Mandelas' place of imprisonment is just cringe-worthy. The action on the field just soon gets tedious.
I would have been far more interested in knowing how the 'new' South Africa bagged the hosting rights of the international tournament and the importance (or not) of it to the relatively new nations' population.
All in all, avoid this simplistic nonsense - unless you are one of the few who will watch rugby in any form (and I know of a couple). If you didn't already know the story, you will after ten minutes into the film.
Who would've thought that uniting a nation after decades of internal division, violence and oppression could be solved by a couple of games of 'rugger'. That's Hollywood.