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Invictus (2009)
Rate:
2
Viewed:
7/10
7/10:
Um...that wasn't a good movie.
Poor Clint Eastwood, he can't pull off a fun sport film. Also, it would help a lot if I knew a thing or two about rugby. The
sad fact is that I don't care about the sport. To make matters worse, Invictus is long and therefore
boring to watch. Plus, the stadium environment looks fake.
Meanwhile, I believe there are four parallelisms at play: Nelson Mandela, his possible assassination, the South Africa rugby
team, and the post-apartheid relations. I don't think any of them was successful. What Clint Eastwood failed to do is to
educate me about the members of the rugby team and their names. I don't know why I should be interested in Nelson Mandela given
he's a terrorist. Were there racial relation problems between whites and blacks in South Africa after the end of apartheid
and Nelson Mandela won the presidency? The film doesn't say, either.
Interestingly enough, after looking up information about the 1995 Rugby World Cup, the players on New Zealand All Blacks
team were food-poisoned the night before the final match and subsequently lost in a hard-fought battle after blazing through
their way through the tournament by defeating their opponents by a large margin.
In short, Invictus is disappointing and proves the material is beyond Clint Eastwood's capabilities.
John Huston or Euzhan Palcy would've done better. Worst of all, I have no idea what the word "invictus" means. Nobody in
the film bothered to explain it. Neither is the meaning of the word "scrum." And damn it, what the hell are the
rules for rugby? How am I supposed to know what the heck is going on if nobody cares about the sport in the United States?
I've stated many times that there's a particular scene in Lean on Me when Morgan Freeman was
behind bars and he just looked like Nelson Mandela. Well, he finally plays him in Invictus, but I have to say he didn't
do a good job. On the other hand, Matt Damon looks too buffed up, is boring, and makes me realize that he can't act.
To be honest with you, I don't care about anything in Invictus, but I'm rather interested in learning why South Africa
is the rape capital of the world where one in four is infected with AIDS and why it has one of the highest crime
rates anywhere. It might have been an interesting movie if Clint Eastwood would dispel the myth of Nelson Mandela. The truth
is: he's not a folk hero the media has made him to be. A staunch believer of communism and terrorism, Mandela took numerous
roles in violence, supported it, and made South Africa a divisive country. He's always been against democracy.
All in all, Invictus is an uninspiring sport picture.