Invictus
“Invictus” is a movie about a South African rugby team that becomes more than just a rugby team. The audience learns this when the team captain tells his players, and I quote, “We’ve become more than just a rugby team.” Welcome to the cinema of Clint Eastwood. No Hollywood director could screw up an inspirational sports docudrama so badly — and garner awards and accolades in the process. “Invictus” is plodding, obvious and unspeakably dull. Eastwood chronicles Nelson Mandela’s embrace of the national team, the Springboks, in the months leading up to rugby’s World Cup in 1995. For many, the Springboks are despised symbols of apartheid, but Mandela sees the underdog team as a chance to unite the country and reassure whites that their new government won’t ruin what they hold sacred. Again, we know this because he says so, repeatedly. As Mandela, Morgan Freeman spends much of the movie staring into the middle distance and making starry-eyed pronouncements about forgiveness. He’s hardly an inspirational leader — he looks weary, both physically and intellectually. All the actors seem to be moving at half speed, their energy sapped by the lifeless screenplay and the declamatory line readings favored by Eastwood. As the Springboks’ captain, Matt Damon is a dutiful dullard. The rest of the players are indistinguishable from one another, and that includes the team’s lone black member. It’s astonishing that we never learn anything about his origins or his struggle for acceptance. “Invictus” might hold together as a middle school civics lesson, but as a movie, it’s a shambles.