Invictus!

dannydiamond

Rugby movie.:eek:

thomond2006

http://www.rugby365.com/all_news/sa/news/2108820.htm

Rugby365 (a SA website) reviews Invictus:

iafrica's Head of Sport Rob Peters rates one of 2009 most eagerly anticipated film! Invictus, starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, is the story about how a Rugby World Cup help unite a nation divided by apartheid.

I really wanted to enjoy 'Invictus', but even before I sat down to watch it I was wary of the hype.

The Rugby World Cup in 1995 was such a huge event in this country's history, and it's still fresh in the mind of all South Africans who experiences it. How would an American's take on one of SA's proudest moments live up to the real thing?

Not all that well, unfortunately…

'Invictus' has its moments. The rugby scenes, for example, are fantastic, while Matt Damon does a great job as Francois Pienaar. Morgan Freeman is solid, if not brilliant, as Nelson Mandela, but to be fair playing an icon like Mandela is never going to be easy to pull off.

There are some stirring moments for South African audiences as they get a chance to relive the glory of '95, but I am not sure it will translate well globally because it doesn't really go into much detail, choosing instead to gloss over the bulk of the tournament.

There seems to be a lot of that in 'Invictus'. The scenes are often stilted and jump from one scenario to another as it desperately tries to decide what it should be focusing on — the Springboks and their World Cup campaign, or the tense political mood of South Africa in the early nineties?

Is it a sports movie or a political one? You can't do both. The problem is director Clint Eastwood doesn't seem to know either and he tries to fit everything in. The result is that neither storyline lives up to its potential and the film falls a little flat because of it.

It's also way too heavy on the melodrama, jumping to seemingly meaningless side-stories, instead of focusing on the very real challenges that Mandela and the Springboks faced during that tournament. These are not totally forgotten, of course, but they flit by in the blink of an eye.

Chester Williams' participation in the tournament, South Africans will remember, was not guaranteed because he was ruled out through injury. As the only black player in the side his importance to bringing the nation together was of huge importance. The fact that he played came about through circumstance and he ended up playing a vital part in the tournament and the resultant nation-building.

You wouldn't know that from the film.

Also, the French game that was such a vital moment in the campaign is glossed over, while the whole thing just ends up looking a little too easy. The Springboks had to fight tooth and nail throughout the tournament, but other than the Final, 'Invictus' makes it look like it was a walk in the park.

Not enough attention is given to the characters within the team, while too much is given to bodyguards and personal assistants who surround Mandela. The real story here should be the team and Mandela.

Mandela knew that he could use the Springboks' World Cup campaign to unite South Africa — split apart by decades of racial hatred - and the plan came to fruition (for a time) as Pienaar and his team overcame all the odds to win the tournament.

In 'Invictus' the whole thing seems incredibly rushed. The coming together of black and white supporters during the World Cup was gradual, but it all seems forced in 'Invictus'. You are constantly hit over the head with it, almost bullied into believing that the World Cup put all those years of tension in the past, never to be seen again.

It was a difficult time in our history and all the dynamics of that period can be hard to understand if you weren't there. Maybe that's why 'Invictus' feels a little false - because the people behind it weren't.

Star Rating... * * *
by Rob Peters

who the fug

More a catering movie

anonymous_joe

who the fug wrote: »

More a catering movie

It's going to go down well in New Zealand alright. :pac:

ScrubsfanChris

dannydiamond wrote: »

Rugby movie.:eek:

It not, its a movie about Mandela that happens to have a rugby player and a few match scenes involved.
A good point that was brought up on RugbyDump:

The one concern is that Damon is 5ft10, while Francois Pienaar is 6ft3. Hopefully when watching the film it's not too distracting for die-hard rugby fans. Afterall, it's not aimed at us only anyway

ScrubsfanChris

ScrubsfanChris wrote: »

It not, its a movie about Mandela that happens to have a rugby player and a few match scenes involved.
A good point that was brought up on RugbyDump:

With clever camera trickery and the fact that they probably brought smaller guys in,I doubt it will be noticed.

madds

Lucca Muscular Lettuce wrote: »

With clever camera trickery and the fact that they probably brought smaller guys in,I doubt it will be noticed.

It's noticeable 0:53 seconds into the OP's video. Damon looks like he should be scrumhalf.

jayteecork

Is it a sports movie or a political one? You can't do both.

Why the hell not?


Probably won't be too bad, South Africans will obviously be more critical than most.

Wonder will the Boks poisining the All Black's food be featured in it

themont85

Is it a sports movie or a political one? You can't do both

Jesus, the Afrikanners must of banned Rocky 4 during apartheid too!

jayteecork

Leaked online.
Watched half of it so far.
Morgan Freeman is excellent(he practically is Mandela anyway) and so is Matt Damon.

The rugby scenes, however, are terrible. They pass the ball around like U-12s, and the forwards actually pass it back to the scrum half through their legs, american football style.

kensutz

Watched it the other night and it's good but so many school boy errors in it rugbywise.

jayteecork

Watched the end of it.
Terrible movie tbh.

Rugby fans knew that that All Black team(one of the greatest ever) losing was a tragedy for the game, so it was hard to get that "feel good" factor of the underdogs winning that Clint was going for.

I think Clint did vaguely acknowledge that the South Africans poisoned the AB's food in that scene in the back of the car. NM's assisstant was listing out the All Black's scores in beating the other teams and NM just kept saying "what can we do to beat them?"

TitoPuente

Pretty terrible movie to be honest. Which surprises me as Clint Eastwood rarely puts a foot wrong. The acting was fine for the most part but the whole thing was incredibly disjointed. The on-field coordination was awful and didn't give a realistic sense of either the game or the tension of any of the matches. The off-field dialogue was awful - as if rugby was some kind of new, alien sport that people (black and white) were all discovering for the first time.

Could have been very good but didn't really 1) communicate the sport or 2) immerse audiences in the passions of the time.

A generous 2/5

Super Sidious

Its not a terrible movie...

Its a nice little background movie to the events surrounding the end of apartheid and Mendellas use of Rugby to unite the country!

The Rugby is like some 4ths teams playing each other, but ignore that and its a decent watch.

A good few of the characters are likeable and Morgan Freeman is class as Nelly!

The reviews on IMDB from SA ppl is pretty positive. Which is a good thing, because it was such an important time in their countries history!

Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar... well as much as I like MAAATTTT DDAAAAMMMON, he's tiny, one of the ball boys was taller than him for the final and so is Morgan Freeman when giving the throphy!

I havnt read any Rugby players reviews of it yet, who were involved in the team. Would like to hear what Francois/Lomu/Stranksy Etc. thought of its portrail!

d'Oracle

The one concern is that Damon is 5ft10, while Francois Pienaar is 6ft3. Hopefully when watching the film it's not too distracting for die-hard rugby fans. Afterall, it's not aimed at us only anyway

John Rhys-Davis is 6'1" and played a dwarf in the Lord of the Rings.

jayteecork

It's obviously aimed at clueless American cinema goers who have probably never even heard of rugby.

"Say, why aren't them there guys wearing any helmets" etc

As for Matt Damon, ok he's small but look at Heinrich Brussow(spl).

Clint knew he'd have to have a star in the lead role to do well in America so he hired Matt. (but I think it backfired as the movie bombed spectacularly over there from what I hear).

GymJim

jayteecork wrote: »

As for Matt Damon, ok he's small but look at Heinrich Brussow(spl).

That's not the point now tbh. Damon is too small to play Francois Pienaar is what's being said (which I agree with tbh).

Encoder1970

Just finished watching it and must say it was really good. Freeman was/is brilliant and had the Mandela expressions down quite well. Damon is beginning to win me over as an actor.

connundrum

Watched the majority of it last night.

Not really impressed, Freeman's accent is nearly as bad as Brad Pitt's Irish accent.

Damon did a decent job.

Rugby scenes were pants, film looked like it was trying to do too many things at the same time.

Didn't see any hint of Eastwood's directorship, in fact it looks like Disney got hold of it and chopped the fcuk out of it.

Could have been so much more, but anyways..

f1dan

Just watched it now.

It wasn't the worst movie ever. It was actually quite enjoyable to watch despite the rugby scenes being fairly bad. Eastwood should have cast someone who could kick properly instead of his son as Joel Stransky.

D-Generate

Is there commentary for the rugby scenes? All I can imagine is the repeated use of "X with the lateral to Y". Fuppin laterals.....

subfreq

Only thing that really annoyed me was the restarts not even going 4 metres. I know it's a tiny detail but in the last match it just looked ridiculous. Not a great film but if you are a rugby enthusiast it's definitely worth a watch.

castie

flynner13 wrote: »

Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar... well as much as I like MAAATTTT DDAAAAMMMON, he's tiny, one of the ball boys was taller than him for the final and so is Morgan Freeman when giving the throphy!

Youve ruined the ending now!!

f1dan

D-Generate wrote: »

Is there commentary for the rugby scenes? All I can imagine is the repeated use of "X with the lateral to Y". Fuppin laterals.....

No, there's no commentary.

subfreq

Geez I have to take back my comment and eat a bit of humble pie. Watching the film motivated me to re-watch the final again and Mehrtons does kick off the game with an insane grass cutter kick off that barely goes 10 metres.

I still remember where I was watching that match for some bizarre reason. It was such an epic sense of occasion.

The All Blacks had such an incredible team.

Noffles

Watched it last night, not the worst film ever really, not the best sports film either but watchable... yes you can tear apart the rugby scenes if you wish but sure why bother... It's made for an American audience so just let it go... at least you're seeing some rugby on a film rather than none....

LFC5Times

Just finished watching it there! Wasn't great to be honest and wasn't terrible either.

It can be hard to understand what they are saying some of the time, the rugby scenes are really cringeworthy - loads of x1's and some of the hits and jumpng around etc.

Freeman does look a lot like Mandela in it.

What I liked about the film was the way it portrayed the black peoples attitude to rugby and vice versa with the whites and how the World Cup and Mandela brought them that bit closer together.

mikedragon32

Didn't Matt Damon play Rugby in "The Departed" also? Loose Forward, I seem to recall.

Very versatile.

For some reason all I have in my mind now is Matt Damon's puppet in Team America.

bokkie23

Personally I can't wait to see it. At the end of the day, it's not a factual documentary, it's a movie. They are allowed poetic licence to enhance the film, and it is only 'based on' real events.

Being married to a South African, I know they will take it seriously. My husband is already up in arms about the whole 'poisoning' thing and he hasn't even seen it yet. I am Irish, and whenever Hollywood makes a film about Irish History, it is usually far from accurate anyway. That's why they are called movies, and not documentaries.

And as for the fact that the rugby playing is apparently 'schoolboy' level. Well.... that's cause they are actors! If they had hired a bunch of rugby players to be in the movie, we'd all be on here giving out about the bad acting. It's not a rugby match, it's a film !!!

Anyway, that's my two cent and I can't wait to see the movie. Freeman was born to play Mandela, and from the trailer, Matt Damon's accent is right up there with Leo's in Blood Diamond ;-). Well, at any rate, they do a better South African accent than when actors try and do an Irish one.

Happy New Year everyone

damselnat

There is something not quite right about it....It's not really a sports movie, yet it's not really a political movie? I think Eastwood was trying to avoid the usual Hollywood melodrama that normally saturates these kinds of stories, but in some ways they could have done with a bit of it, imo. The lack of commentary for the rugby scenes really grated on me, I thought it meant they fell a bit flat, and Matt Damon seemed a little lost, probably because his part was pretty one dimensional and not terribly well written....While it wasn't a bad movie per se (and a damn sight better than that Forever Strong), there was just something missing. I think it had the potential to be a very good movie, even if it isn't a big American sport, but it just lacked some sort of spark that I can't quite put my finger on??

Cool_CM

bokkie23 wrote: »

And as for the fact that the rugby playing is apparently 'schoolboy' level. Well.... that's cause they are actors! If they had hired a bunch of rugby players to be in the movie, we'd all be on here giving out about the bad acting. It's not a rugby match, it's a film !!!

As far as sporting films go, it has a lot to live up to though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbALYBSFlXY

athtrasna

I enjoyed the film...cheesy in parts and the rugby shots made me feel queasy but overall...a good couple of hours entertainment.

The things that annoyed me most from a detail point of view was that "Lomu" was the same height as everyone else waiting to go out onto the pitch.

Also they had the same ref for all the games?

crisco10

athtrasna wrote: »

Also they had the same ref for all the games?

Just like Munster and Leinster had Mr. Owens on the way to the HC final??

athtrasna

crisco10 wrote: »

Just like Munster and Leinster had Mr. Owens on the way to the HC final??

Wikipedia says they had a variety of referees through the pool, and on the way to the final yet the match sequences used the same referee for all the games. It's all about the detail :P

itsallaboutheL

As a cinematic spectacle.... i enjoyed it.. i do wonder though, those who question the rugby skills... could they do better?? there's a couple of nice wrap arounds that wouldn't be seen in junior rugby no matter what you would like to think.

shanagarry

Outside of the big name actors, the rugby parts were played by guys who actually do play rugby. Most of them play at a decent club standard around the Cape Town area. Lomu was played by a Samoan international.

hardCopy

Just watching "The Sixteenth Man" on ESPN, basically tells the story through interviews with the players and match footage

Much closer to the book and probably an easier watch for rugby fans.

Also narrated by Morgan Freeman

Corsendonk

Notice the movie forgot to cover the Canada v South African game otherwise know as the Battle of Port Elizabeth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Y4PO_9jBQ