Movie Review

Movie: Invictus
Director: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, also featuring Matt Damon (…)
Genre: Drama

This is a really interesting movie. It has an interesting look at how inter-racial relations in South Africa fared when Nelson Mandela took up office for His first year as President in a post-apartheid country. Of course, the sentiments of apartheidism are still in a slow phasing out from the rainbow nation and we know that it was only possible because of the work of Nelson Mandela.

Anyway, back to the whole point of this post, a review of the movie.

The movie as I said earlier is based on the situation in South Africa at the time of the Rugby World Cup ’95. At that time, the Springboks were the accorded the title of being the worst rugby team and were representative of white S. Africa; along with the colours of their uniform – the Green and Gold. In fact they were so bad that they were going to be disbanded as a team and the Green & Gold revoked as team national colours of the country. Mandela stepped in and changed that outcome and gave South African Rugby a chance to become a part of his rainbow nation building exercise.

The President putting faith in the team gave them a boost of confidence that saw them through to winning the rugby world cup.

Clint Eastwood has done it again. I gotta say that out right from the start, Clint Eastwood has done it again. First it was Letters from Iwo Jima and this other one about the American flag raised on Iwo Jima. There’ve been several good movies that he’s come out with that have made a huge impact at global movie awards including Sundance, the Academies and the Golden Globe. I have no doubts that this movie will collect even more awards for the acclaimed Director.

Morgan Freeman’s acting as President Nelson Mandela is something completely different from what we’ve seen from this actor. It’s obvious that he’s had to take time to rehearse the part and practice. But I believe that he was the perfect person for the role. He was able to replicate Mandela’s poise and physical presence. Even the accent was a little stressed but I could distinguish it from his normal American accents.

Matt Damon portrayed Springboks captain Francois (surname). Yeah, he was cute and hunky dory. But he played the character so well and showed the leadership abilities that Francois used to change the team from one that was apartheid conscious to one that embraced change.

Can you get the drift of this review??? Change from old to new possibilities???

That’s what Invictus is all about. It shows the ability that people have to change their lives and their nation, and it was only because one man dared to bring the change in himself.

This movie is a must have (if you can’t get the original then I guess you’re stuck cause the government’s cracking down on all pirated copies)

LOL