– Life along the Slaney

Invictus

Director: Clint Eastwood

Starring: Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman

To say that the best thing about this film is Matt Damon’s South African accent is not to belittle Eastwood’s homage to Nelson Mandela.

Damon, playing Francois Pienarr, nails one of the hardest accents to get right (possibly with the Irish one the toughest out there). His performance as the Springbok rugby captain is flawless and is the shining light in this film.

The film, which tells the story of Mandela’s early days in the president’s office following his release from Robin Island, drifts into the marshy ground of sentimentality on several occasions but in the end has a powerful message which it gets across.

Morgan Freeman was apparently chosen by the great man himself to portray the ANC leader and does an admirable job as the elder statesman, who is portray as so humble and forgiving he makes Gandhi look like Donald Trump.

The film details how Mandela saw rugby as the unlikely saviour of his beloved country and a way of uniting the blacks and whites. As in all stories of racism there are stock characters on both sides who typify the attitudes of the masses but have their opinions changed in the end.

Mandela’s security men don’t want to share an office with the secret service men who only months previously had tried to jail them. Damon’s father laughs at the new president and says nothing good will ever come of having a black president.

While the eventual schmoltsey ending is as clear as the nose on your face from the outset, Eastwood creates a very good-looking film with some powerful moments, such as when Pienarr stands in the prison cell occupied by Mandela for over 10 years.

The actions scenes on the pitch are passable but some of the slow motion passages in the final are cringe-worthy and unnecessary.

Overall the film delivers the message it set out to deliver but it is possibly Eastwood’s worst directorial effort since Space Cowboys in 2000. This isn’t such a bad thing however when you consider his films since then have included Gran Torino, Letters from Iwo Jima, Million Dollar Baby and Changeling.