IMDB Plot Synopsis: Nelson Mandela, in his first term as the South African President, initiates a unique venture to unite the apartheid-torn land: enlist the national rugby team on a mission to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
- I’m not sure how engaging this movie will be to a North American audience that is by and large not that invested in rugby. I mean it’s still an inspirational sports film and people love those, but I’m not sure how into this I really got.
- Clint Eastwood really goes for the oversell sometimes and seriously needs to tone it down in places. Not all lines of dialogue need to sound like presidential addresses. Not all scenes of grit and determination need uplifting musical accompaniment. I especially hated the part where he tried to feed into the September 11th anxiety people get when it looks like a madman has taken over a plane, only to find out that apparently the Goodyear blimp couldn’t make it to Cape Town to deliver a message of support. Cheap, Mr. Eastwood, cheap.
- Morgan Freeman’s biggest problem in this movie is that he’s too recognizable as Morgan Freeman. I’m not seeing Nelson Mandela, I’m seeing Lucius Fox with a South African accent.
- I’ve encountered a lot of people who will sign off their emails with “respect” and yet what they really mean is for you to respect them but not vice versa. The intense grace and humility Mandela is depicted with in this seems to be what this use of “respect” is probably supposed to be aiming at; he has near reverential respect for nearly everyone he comes into contact with, regardless of who they are.
- They didn’t do a terribly good job of actually telling us where we were, game-wise, in the World Cup, despite the fact that Mandela had a giant whiteboard in his office with the scoring brackets on it. They tell us before it starts that there are X many pools with Y many teams and only the top two teams from each pool move on to the quarter finals, etc. (You know, how it usually works with these things.) But then we’re just shown game after game without any kind of differentiation between the games beyond changing opponents, so the next thing you know they’re in the semi-finals against France. I mean, we knew they were winning, but it would have been nice to know that they’d gotten out of the round robin and into the playoffs.
- The All Blacks from New Zealand are now the new equivalent of Russian hockey teams or the Yankees in sports films.
- Not knowing anyone from South Africa, I can’t tell if Matt Damon’s accent was any good. What I did notice was that every time he told his team to “focus”, it sounded like he was saying “fuck us”.
- I don’t know if it’s on purpose or just a coincidence that the typeface used in the Invictus posters is Gotham, same as used in Obama’s campaign posters. (I think Eastwood used this for Gran Torino as well.)
- I think I’d like to date a rugby player, because they have absolutely amazing thighs. My mind, it boggles. (This is what I’m taking away from this movie, yes.)
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