Invictus is Clint Eastwood’s latest Oscar bait about Nelson Mandela and his unlikely bond with a Rugby team.  The movie is based on John Carlin’s book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation (which has now been re-named Invictus: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation), which is based on the true story of Mandela’s first term as president of South Africa.  He saw that his nation was deeply divided and if he was ever going to solve any of it’s problems he needed to heal that division first.  He saw his opportunity in the South African rugby team.  The team was a symbol of the old white regime and the blacks openly cheered for whoever they were playing against.  Mandela thought that getting his nation to unite around this team may be the answer he was looking for.  The film tells the story of their 1995 World Cup matches.

I tend to like movies like this.  Bits of true stories of historic figures, but very confined to one event that isn’t too widely known about but provides more insight into that person.  A great example is last years Frost/Nixon.  This movie however fell really flat.  First of all it’s cliche’d to hell.  If you’ve ever seen any movie ever you pretty much know what’s going to happen.  Also this is pretty recent history.  1995 wasn’t that long ago, people still remember it well.  So when you have things in your script like a major subplot being how paranoid Mandela’s bodyguards are about an assassination attempt, we know he’s still alive, you can’t make that big of a deal out of literally nothing.  This is actually a major complaint.  There’s more than one odd subplot that just sort of fades away or isn’t handled properly.  Like Mandela’s family life.  There’s a bunch of scenes thrown in there but they have nothing to do with the rest of the film and never add anything, that part of his life isn’t a part of this story.

Like I said in the intro this movie is basically just Oscar bait.  Morgan Freeman is great in it, but he’s great in everything.  There are probably people who are more deserving of a best actor award this year (coughChristolphWaltzcough) but Freeman is a shoe-in for a nomination.  The movie itself often felt stilted and there really wasn’t anything else of note.  It’s also way too long.

So if you have a lot of time to kill and want to see some Morgan Freeman action then this is for you, otherwise at least wait till the dvd.  If the story interests you, the book is available over at Amazon