Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman Deliver Predictable Drama With ‘Invictus’

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CHICAGO – Director Clint Eastwood has given up on subtlety, choosing instead to tell old-fashioned, direct stories with as much technical skill and dramatic competency as possible. There’s nothing particularly wrong with the legendary director’s “Invictus,” but it’s also not nearly as memorable or thrilling as it could have or, given the true story that it tells, should have been.

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 3.0/5.0
Rating: 3.0/5.0

Personally, I find Eastwood the most interesting when he deals in gray moral situations like the ones at the core of “Mystic River,” “Unforgiven” or “Million Dollar Baby”. Lately, with films like “Flags of Our Fathers,” “Changeling,” “Gran Torino,” and, now, “Invictus,” there is no gray. He seems to have lost any interest at all in striking a subtle chord. Every single character development and plot turn is telegraphed in the previews and merely underlined by the film itself. It’s old-fashioned cinema and, in this case, it fits the dramatic beats more adequately than some of his recent work, but it never gets below the basic facts of what really happened to unearth the human story.

StarRead Brian Tallerico’s full review of “Invictus” in our reviews section.

“Invictus” opens with the release of Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) from prison and his rise to power as the leader of South Africa. When Mandela took power after the close of the apartheid era, the nation was wildly divided with may whites refusing to recognize his leadership and blacks seeking for a complete housekeeping of the country that kept them down for so long.

A symbol of the days of apartheid was the rugby team known as the Springboks. When Mandela attends a Springboks game and sees blacks rooting for their opponent, he realizes that there is political currency in this team of athletic young men. He could have (and was encouraged to) merely disband the team, but he realized that if he could get whites and blacks to cheer for them together that it would be a major step on the way towards honest unity in his country.

‘Invictus’ stars Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. It was written by Anthony Peckham and directed by Clint Eastwood. It opened on December 11th, 2009. It is rated PG-13.

StarContinuing reading for Brian Tallerico’s full “Invictus” review.

MORGAN FREEMAN as Nelson Mandela in Warner Bros. Pictures' and Spyglass Entertainment's drama
Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in Warner Bros. Pictures and Spyglass Entertainments drama Invictus, a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
Photo credit: Keith Bernstein

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