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Clint Eastwood is a cordon bleu filmmaker, the head chef at Hollywood whose impeccable presentations are always nourishing, frequently challenging and sometimes surprising. So it is with this visit to the early hours of a new South Africa when, in 1995, Nelson Mandela pulled the nation behind him to win the Rugby World Cup. Needing a catalyst to bring white and black South Africans together, he sets his sights on the flailing Springboks and the RWC to be held in Johannesburg. A sporting victory here, goes his questionable reasoning, should domino into social victory everywhere. He was, of course, correct.
This is a film that is never anything less than enjoyable. It is an Eastwood production after all, and if anyone knows how to drive long narrative with masterful ease, it is he. Yet there's also an unsettling hollowness at the heart of what is unarguably a major story. Invictus is uncharacteristically thin material that gets by on solid performances and the not infrequent pressing of emotional buttons (rail against racist Afrikaners, rally when whites embrace blacks, cheer for Mandela's visionary style). Given tough shoes to fill, Freeman does good work in a two dimensional role but never completely makes the world's favourite African his own. Despite his unyielding charm, there's something very Freeman about his Mandela. It doesn't help that the typically reliable Damon is given even less to work with and is reduced to a rather unexciting cypher.
It would be all to easy to completely dismantle Invictus and to do so would miss the point. Eastwood has created a fine socio-political sporting drama whose good intent is faultless. Solid entertainment certainly, but a little less would have created a lot more and twenty minutes of a foregone finale is fifteen too many (notwithstanding visceral footage of steely men determined to give their country everything in their power). Ultimately, given the rawness of the times and the heroic players therein, it's disappointing to find your heart hasn't been nourished, challenged or surprised as powerfully as it ought.
// COLIN FRASER
moviereview colin fraser film movie australia review critic flicks