Invictus

[Epigonos]

I have just returned home from seeing Invictus. It is a wonderfully crafted film, an inspiring story, and both Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon have to be seen to be believed. I am willing to bet a lot of money that Freeman receives a Best Actor Academy Award Nomination and Damon a Best Supporting Actor one. Damon put on some major size for the role and he has the fiendishly difficult Afrikaner accent down perfectly.

 

If you are a movie fan you won't want to miss this one. Eastwood has made another winner.

[uwsman2]

Confirmation

 

Confirming everything Epigonos said. Just home from seeing Invictus. This is very well done by Clint Eastwood. Morgan Freeman absolutely nails the role of Nelson Mandela, and Matt Damon accomplishes wonders as Francois, captain of the South African rugby team. I've not previously paid attention to rugby - looks like quite the bone-crushing game from this film. My movie-going companion and I were sitting next to an English lawyer who explained some of the fine points to us afterwards. When I asked him how authentic the rugby scenes looked to him, he said they were a reasonable but somewhat cleaned-up facsimile of the real thing.

 

But you don't need to be a sports fan to enjoy this one. Just be able to appreciate fine acting and a brilliant historical recreation of a turning point in history.

[+ glutes]

Confirmation 2

 

I can only mirror what Epi & Us have posted.

To add, there are lessons in this movie: historical, racial and ruby.

(Also some outstanding RSA eye candy)

Clint and crowd, goeie werk!

[Guest Merlin]

What kind of reviews are those? Now tell us what we wanted to know. Just how beefy is Damon in the movie? How about the locker rooom scenes? How much skin? Any frontal?

[Epigonos]

If I remember correctly there is only ONE brief scene in which Damon removes his shirt. He had obviously spent a considerable amount of time in a gym and put on quite a bit of size. Interestingly enough the real team captian was 6'3" which Damon certainly is not but he looked great in the role anyway.

[+ Lucky]

Okay, here is what turns me off from seeing this movie. Uplifting sports movies have become cliche. Is there anything new in this movie, or is the same old stuff? Does Freeman truly portray Mandela, or is he just Morgan Freeman again? Thanks. I may see it depending on what I hear.

[Epigonos]

Lucky I sincerely believe that this is the best film BOTH Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon have, thus far, made. They both do outstanding acting jobs portraying their respective characters. Freeman plays Mandela as bright, sensitive, somewhat sad/melancholy and quietly strong and determined to build a biracial united South Africa. The Morgan Freeman of many previous films is simply not present in this one.

 

Though a film about a rugby team this is very different from typical sport films life Invincible, The Miracle, or Hoosiers for example. It does an outstanding job showing the difficulties and conflicts that arose in the transition from the Apartheid to majority rule in South Africa. Much of what makes this film so captivating and interesting is how many of the minor character are presented.

[+ purplekow]

Was the poem ever recited in the movie?

 

I memorized this poem in the 5th grade and I can still pretty much recite it from memory although the third stanza never felt like it flowed as it should

 

William Ernest Henley

 

Out of the night that covers me

Black as the Pit from pole to pole

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul

 

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloodied but unbowed

 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the horror of the shade

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid

 

It matters not how strait the gate

How charged with punishments the scroll

I am the master of my fate

I am the captain of my soul

 

 

Henley was a survivor of disease and amputation of a limb. He spent much of his life overcoming these. He was a young man when he became ill and lived a full life and a full lifetime for the times.

I doubt that I could have picked a poem more represenative of the life I would live. I wish I could say that at 11, I had that kind of insight. Truth be told, I picked it because it was short and it seemed very dramatic to me at the time. It comes to my mind at the strangest time since then. Sitting on a plane or sitting quietly on a beach and strangely enough, most commonly while sitting on the bowl. I think I need psychiatric help when that happens. Combatting existential angst in the middle of a shit convinces me that I need evaluation.

[+ glutes]

Yes it was PK, and done very well by Freeman.

[+ purplekow]

Yes it was PK, and done very well by Freeman.

 

 

Well I would put up 11 year old PK's version again Morgan Freeman's any day. Of course it would lose every time, but I would still do it.

[+ Charlie]

I went to see the movie yesterday. It is a well made feel-good movie that keeps flashing "MESSAGE" at you (Can't we all just get along? Yes, we can!). There are no villains in the movie, because we are all decent human beings--every single blessed one of us!--who just don't understand that fact because of our prejudices, but through the power of sport, in which two groups of man beat one another to a pulp, we can come to recognize and celebrate our oneness. I suspect that in addition to the ultra-Victorian poet William Ernest Henley, Mandela must also have been reading a smuggled copy of Jay Haley's "The Power Tactics of Jesus Christ."

 

Despite that simplistic sappiness, I did enjoy the movie, because of Morgan Freeman's acting, and the occasional glimpse of athletic flesh (if Matt Damon really did work hard to get buff, it hardly seems worth it it, because you see his chest for about two seconds). This is a wholesome movie to take the grandkids to see.