Bryan's Movie Review -- Invictus **1/2

Some movies set themselves up to be above reproach by virtue of their subject matter. Seriously, you make a movie about a human rights icon and racial reconciliation, and a lot of people will automatically say it is one of the best movies they've ever seen. They'll say this even if the movie sucks.

I expect that will be the response that many people will have for Invictus, the latest directorial effort from Clint Eastwood. In fact, I expect that this movie will be nominated for several Academy Awards based on its subject matter alone. But that doesn't change the fact that, despite a few bright spots, it is a more or less mediocre movie and, at times, an insufferable bore.

Invictus stars Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. If you read the backstory on this movie, you'll find that Freeman has wanted to play Mandela for years and has been trying to put a movie together for some time. But, at his advanced age, Freeman can hardly star in a traditional biopic telling Mandela's life story. So, instead, Invictus tells the truly inspirational story of the South African national rugby teams historic World Cup victory and Mandela's efforts to use the team to heal racial divisions in his country after the end of apartheid. Matt Damon costars as the rugby team's captain, Francois Pienaar.

Now, I've said on several occasions that Clint Eastwood is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, living American directors. I still believe that's the case. But, I believe his talents made him ill-suited to tell the story of Invictus. Eastwood specializes in sparse storytelling, even when the backdrop of the story is huge (like, say, the Battle of Iwo Jima). He does his best work when his stories focus on individuals, often making their flaws and contradictions take center stage. In the end, Eastwood's greatest strength is that he seems to just let the cameras roll and let good actors do their thing. As a result, he tends to get outstanding performances out of his casts and is a favorite director among actors.

Invictus is wrong for this style on two points. First of all, the story is too big for the typical Eastwoodian approach. Trying to play to its director's strengths, the movie plays out the struggles of the entire country of South Africa through the lens of a handful of characters. But, because the climax of the story takes place on a rugby field, much of the time of the movie's hefty running time are devoted to depicting the rugby games themselves.

And, quite honestly, action and sports sequences just aren't Eastwood's strong suit (even the big battle sequences in his Iwo Jima movies played a distant second fiddle to the smaller-scale human stories). There's no better way to say it: the rugby scenes in Invictus are boring and way too long. As a result, many of the stories about the actual people are given short shrift and, in the end, they appear to just work out on their own.

For example, Pienaar's father begins the movie with a strong dislike for Mandela and a yearning for those good ol' days of apartheid. But, suddenly, at one point in the movie, he's over it and is overjoyed to be accompanied by his black maid to the rugby match. At another point in the movie, the white members of the rugby team (there's only one black player on the team) express their disapproval with singing the new national anthem -- calling it a "terrorist song." But, before the championship match, they're all there singing proudly. Conflict resolved. Yay!

The second major reason that Eastwood's style doesn't work for a movie like this is that the majority of the great characters from his movies are deeply flawed, some tragically so. While there were apparently a lot of flaws in the members of the South African rugby team, they aren't the focus of the movie, Freeman's Mandela is. And, rather than giving a warts-and-all portrayal of Mandela the man, the movie delivers Mandela the icon. At no point in the movie does Mandela say or do anything that doesn't sound like it comes directly from one of his great speeches or writings. In every situation -- whether it's dealing with close friends, his estranged daughter, his government staff, or his security detail -- Freeman delivers lines about forgiveness, peace, unity, or human dignity that sound like they come from the " Awesome Book of Awesome Nelson Mandela Quotes." Freeman delivers a very fine performance, but, because it doesn't delve any deeper into the actual character of Mandela, the portrayal is, in the end, more imitation than anything.

A lot of people will like this movie. I'm just not really one of them. I didn't hate it. It is worth seeing. But, as a fan of Eastwood, Freeman, and Damon, I expected more than the by-the-numbers mediocrity on display in Invictus.