Invictus

Starring:

Genre: Biography, Drama

Rated: PG-13

Nelson Mandela, having been recently released from prison utilizes the local rugby team and the world cup of rugby to help unite his nation.

Morgan Freeman stars as Nelson Mandela who after release from prison is elected as South Africa’s president. The country is still racially divided and Mandela hopes that by getting his country to win the World Cup of Rugby he can unite the people by having them all rally together to support the team.

Invictus is entertaining in the same way a special on the history channel is. The pace of the film is slow and although there’s ample time to create a bond with these people, it doesn’t feel like there is any reason besides common decency for the audience to connect with the characters. The film doesn’t have any of the typical sports clichés that make you wonder how they are going to pull off a victory, in this instance there is never any doubt, this foregone conclusion detaches the viewer and pulls you further away. Invictus is a very dry, by the book retelling of the story, there is such a detachment from there characters that it never succeeds in pulling you in.

Sadly for me one of the biggest issues I had with the film was Freeman himself, He has reached the point in his career that every character he plays should be called Morgan Freeman. There isn’t a second in the film where you think to yourself this is Mandela, Instead you think how great it is that Morgan Freeman is uniting South Africa. Furthermore Mr. Freeman slips in and out of his accent while Matt Damon who plays Fancois Pienaar (the captain of the rugby team) is spot on with his accent the entire time only making Freemans that more obvious. Damon is stellar in his role given what screen time he has and hopefully will no longer ever have to be referred to in the same sentence as Ben Affleck again.

The title of the film comes from a poem by William Ernest Henley that Mandela read while in prison, If only the film had the emotional weight of the poem it could have risen above its documentary feel, and moved the audience like Mandela moved his nation.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.