Hijinks Movie Reviews: Invictus

Whoa! What’s this? 2 movie reviews in 2 days? Sweet googly-moogly! That’s what you get when I am on a holiday weekend and have a bit more time on my hands to watch some extra movies. But enough intro mumbo-jumbo, let’s get into the review.

Invictus first grabbed my attention because of Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman, 2 of my favorite actors. Then again, it’s easy to like guys who are great in everything they appear in. I honestly sat down to watch this flick based on that alone, I hardly knew anything about what the movie was actually about… other than the fact that Nelson Mandela and rugby were somewhere in the storyline. Obviously, what I ended up getting was so much more than that.

Maybe I’m not cultured enough, but I didn’t know that Invictus is actually the name of a poem, the poem that helped Nelson Mandela through his time in prison, inspiring him to “stand when all he wanted to do was lie down”. The movie, however, is based on a book called Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed a Nation. Invictus was released in theaters December 11, 2009, and on Blu-ray and DVD May 18, 2010. I’m a Netflix guy though, so it was only available to me this last week.The movie centers around Freeman’s Nelson Mandela and the South African rugby captain François Pienaar, played by Matt Damon. Mandela is tasked with having to deal with crime and unemployment, two of South Africa’s biggest problems, when he takes some time to attend a Springboks game, the country’s rugby union team. He notices than many of the non-white fans would actually cheer for the other team because, in their mind, the Springboks represent prejudice and apartheid, he even admits to doing the same during his time in prison. Knowing that South Africa is set to host the 1995 Rugby World Cup in one year’s time, he decides to motivate the captain of this team to help him change the opinions so many people had of each other, using this team as the instigator.

Pienaar and his teammates begin to train for the World Cup, and he tells them of the plans to become more active in the community and interact with the locals. They all voice varying levels of disinterest, but begrudgingly oblige. The locals slowly begin to change, and support for the Springboks begins to grow amongst the non-white population. As is typical in these sports-centered dramas, the population strengthens their support for the team and the team begins to play better. Mandela and Pienaar continue to publicly support each other as the tournament moves farther along. The Springboks begin to win games, even though they were expected to quickly fall out of the tournament, and eventually they make their way into the finale against the ‘unbeatable’ New Zealand team. Against all odds, they hang with this superior team and are able to win late in the match to set off wild crowd celebration.

These stories are always more enjoyable when they are based in reality, rather than being made up by some Hollywood muckety-muck. If you’ve read my bio, or know me at all, you know that I am the coach of a football team, so I have a soft spot for sports themed movies… and enjoy them more than most people, the scenes where a coach or captain motivate the rest of the team in particular. They did a good job throughout this movie showing the prevailing segregation between the whites and blacks, and then emphasizing as it slowly begins to change, and I think that was my favorite part of this movie. The movie ends fittingly with the people celebrating the victory, everyone embracing each other regardless of color, as Morgan Freeman recites a small portion of the poem that helped him for so long:

I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Dave’s Quick Hits: Honestly, if you’ve seen 1 sports movie, you’ve seen them all, this is the same thing only with prejudice mixed in. Good story, I’ll give it a 6.5 out of 10.
The Wife’s Thoughts: I don’t know the game of rugby and I don’t really know the whole story of South Africa and Mandela, so I really didn’t understand it and got bored, but hey, Matt Damon… eye candy like that can help ANY movie! 2 out of 10, worse if not for Matt Damon.
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 75% Fresh