Invictus (2009)

Clint Eastwood is a very solid, often excellent director, and while there are rare exceptions like Hearafter, I almost always really like his work. Yet at the same time I often find myself lacking any great desire to go out of my way to see one of his movies. Invictus is a great example of this, when I first I heard about it I more or less knew it was going to be good, but I also didn't really want to go out and see it. It's a kind of movie equivalent of eating your vegetables, you know once you do you'll be glad you did, but you often put off doing so in favor of something more immediately gratifying. Invictus tells the story of Nelson Mandela's efforts to bring peace and reconciliation to post apartheid South Africa (in part) by trying to get the national rugby team, historically loved by the whites and hated by the blacks, to win the World Cup and becoming a nationally unifying force. Mandela (here quite logically portrayed by Morgan Freeman and he's just as good as you'd except him to be in the part) helps facilitate this by winning over the teams captain Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon). So in short Eastwood combines an inspiring civil rights movie with an inspiring sports movie and its well, inspiring. A slightly indirect way of communicating the essence of Nelson Mandala to film, but on the whole an effective one. I particularly like the subplot of the racial integration of the presidential bodyguard, it served as good counterpoint to the sports narrative. This movie is good, I'm glad I saw it, but it's not one of Eastwood's strongest directorial works, I have nothing against it, but I don't feel any great desire to ever see it again. ***