From a Checkered Past, to World Cup Glory

Rating: 10/10 (4 March 2011)

You need know nothing about rugby, and you need know nothing about South Africa. Clint Eastwood directs, as Matt Damon, perhaps for the first time in career, acts so well that you forget you're watching Matt Damon.
Damon portraits François Pienaar, the captain of the South African Rugby team; a team that is talented but in a wholesale state of disarray. The team's players are listless and unmotivated, while their level of play is evocative of the Bad News Bears. Meanwhile, the nation's black rugby fans cheer not for South Africa but for England.
At the same time, newly elected Nelson Mandela wrestles with the task of running the government and uniting the country while reconciling black aspirations with white fears.
With South Africa hosting the soon-approaching World Cup, the rugby team's management is fired while the new black government coalition tries to change the team's mascot and team name, The Springboks, in attempt to erase all memory of Apartheid.
Mandela quietly calls on captain Pienaar to reset the tone of the team and prepare the Springboks for the unlikely feat of winning the World Cup at home and uniting the nation.
Invictus gets its name from a poem by William Ernest Henley that Mandela holds dear as something that made him stand up when, imprisoned for 26 years, "all he wanted to do was lie down". Like the poem, which speaks of the ability to take responsibility for one's destiny, the film tells the story of South Africa's steps forward in the work-in-progress of setting free the nation, both psychologically and socio-politically from its checkered past.
Invictus has so many important facets at work in a brilliant, exciting, but well-tailored storyline, that you'll digest it for days. Do yourself a favor, and go see it.
written by Andy Frye, MySportsComplex.blogspot.com