MOVIEmeter: Up 275% in popularity this week.
Director: Clint Eastwood
Writers (WGA): Anthony Peckham (screenplay) John Carlin (book)
Release Date: 11 December 2009 (USA)
Plot: Nelson Mandela, in his first term as the South African President, initiates a unique venture to unite the
apartheid-torn land: enlist the national rugby team on a mission to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup
Awards: Nominated for 3 Golden Globes. Another 3 wins & 8 nominations.
INVICTUS TRAILER
From director Clint Eastwood, 'Invictus' tells the inspiring true story of how Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) joined forces with the captain of South Africas rugby team, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), to help unite their country. Newly elected President Mandela knows his nation remains racially and economically divided in the wake of apartheid. Believing he can bring his people together through the universal language of sport, Mandela rallies South Africas underdog rugby team as they make an unlikely run to the 1995 World Cup Championship match.
The poem 'INVICTUS' by William Ernest Henley, from which Nelson Mandela drew strength while in prison.
"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 bloody, 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."
"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 bloody, 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."
Movie Review:
This magnificent political biography also happens to be a very good movie. Not a great movie, but a great and important story, well told and even better acted by its two leads. Lessons in history and leadership should all be so charismatic.The movie has rhythms and totems unfamiliar to American audiences, notwithstanding its trio of American superstars: Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon on screen and Clint Eastwood behind the camera. It’s also perhaps overlong at 2 1/4 hours.Freeman easily inhabits the iconic Nelson Mandela: twinkling eyes, ready smile, quiet dignity, rolling vocal intonations. For an African-American born and raised in Jim Crow era Tennessee, playing one of the two greatest black leaders of the 20th Century (the other being Dr. Martin Luther King), is a career accomplishment of the highest order.
Damon muscled up impressively, amply filling out his rugby shirt. With lightened hair and chiseled head, he looks every centimeter the Afrikaner ideal. Playing the good-guy hero comes naturally to this All American superstar, though he impresses more than usual here by playing a good-old-boy rugby star, complete with an apparently accurate Afrikaans accent.
Bottom line: American audiences can count on the surefire satisfaction of a happy ending to a consequential story delivered by familiar stars shining brightly.
In the rest of the world, especially the British Commonwealth and other rugby playing nations, Invictus will play like a modern and secular Greatest Story Ever Told. Hallelujah.
This magnificent political biography also happens to be a very good movie. Not a great movie, but a great and important story, well told and even better acted by its two leads. Lessons in history and leadership should all be so charismatic.The movie has rhythms and totems unfamiliar to American audiences, notwithstanding its trio of American superstars: Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon on screen and Clint Eastwood behind the camera. It’s also perhaps overlong at 2 1/4 hours.Freeman easily inhabits the iconic Nelson Mandela: twinkling eyes, ready smile, quiet dignity, rolling vocal intonations. For an African-American born and raised in Jim Crow era Tennessee, playing one of the two greatest black leaders of the 20th Century (the other being Dr. Martin Luther King), is a career accomplishment of the highest order.
Damon muscled up impressively, amply filling out his rugby shirt. With lightened hair and chiseled head, he looks every centimeter the Afrikaner ideal. Playing the good-guy hero comes naturally to this All American superstar, though he impresses more than usual here by playing a good-old-boy rugby star, complete with an apparently accurate Afrikaans accent.
Bottom line: American audiences can count on the surefire satisfaction of a happy ending to a consequential story delivered by familiar stars shining brightly.
In the rest of the world, especially the British Commonwealth and other rugby playing nations, Invictus will play like a modern and secular Greatest Story Ever Told. Hallelujah.
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