Invictus
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the fox
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Re: Invictus
Saw this Monday 01/02 - Nottingham Cineworld, I had no idea what is was about and hadn’t read any reviews on it. I really enjoyed it; it gave me a good insight to what was happening at that time. This has got to be the best film that i’ve seen in a long while. Might even p*y to see it again.
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Beate
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Re: Invictus
http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/films/invic ... 31742.html
The ViewLondon Review
Review by Matthew Turner
03/02/2010
Opens Friday 05 February 2010
Three out of Five stars
Running time: 134 mins
Watchable, solidly made feelgood drama that delivers everything the trailer promises but there are no surprises, Freeman's not quite as good as you'd expect and the sugar-coating is laid on a little too thick.
What's it all about?
Based on the book by John Carlin and directed by Clint Eastwood, Invictus stars Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, who's elected as South Africa's first democratically elected president four years after his release from spending 27 years as a political prisoner. The whites fear violent repercussions and many of the blacks seem to want revenge but Mandela is keenly aware that South Africa needs to unite as a country if political stability is to be achieved.
In a stroke of genius, Mandela focuses his attention on the Springbok rugby team (a symbol of white rule, largely loathed by the black majority) and attempts to convince team captain Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon) of the political importance of the nation uniting behind a South African victory at the 1995 Rugby World Cup. But can they actually win?
The Good
Eastwood's direction is solid and dependable throughout and the film is never less than watchable but it's also thuddingly predictable and there's nothing in the film that you don't immediately know from watching the trailer. Damon is excellent, as always, but he's not really called upon to do much except be blandly inspirational, though you have to admire his commitment to bulking up for the part.
The Bad
Conversely, Freeman's not nearly as good as his Oscar nomination would suggest – his attempt at Mandela's accent seems weird and mannered and it's frequently distracting as a result. Similarly, the film's sugar-coating of events is a little too hard to take in places – for example, it seems far-fetched that Mandela's white security team wouldn't display any bigotry whatsoever towards their new black colleagues.
On top of that, the film takes a few liberties with the truth, such as leaving out the fact that the New Zealand team apparently had food poisoning during the final, while you also get the feeling there are more interesting stories being left on the sidelines, such as the role of the team's only black player, Chester Williams (McNeil Hendricks).
Worth seeing?
Invictus is a solid retelling of an undeniably inspirational story but it's unforgivably bland in places and you can't help thinking that it might have worked a lot better as a documentary.
The ViewLondon Review
Review by Matthew Turner
03/02/2010
Opens Friday 05 February 2010
Three out of Five stars
Running time: 134 mins
Watchable, solidly made feelgood drama that delivers everything the trailer promises but there are no surprises, Freeman's not quite as good as you'd expect and the sugar-coating is laid on a little too thick.
What's it all about?
Based on the book by John Carlin and directed by Clint Eastwood, Invictus stars Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, who's elected as South Africa's first democratically elected president four years after his release from spending 27 years as a political prisoner. The whites fear violent repercussions and many of the blacks seem to want revenge but Mandela is keenly aware that South Africa needs to unite as a country if political stability is to be achieved.
In a stroke of genius, Mandela focuses his attention on the Springbok rugby team (a symbol of white rule, largely loathed by the black majority) and attempts to convince team captain Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon) of the political importance of the nation uniting behind a South African victory at the 1995 Rugby World Cup. But can they actually win?
The Good
Eastwood's direction is solid and dependable throughout and the film is never less than watchable but it's also thuddingly predictable and there's nothing in the film that you don't immediately know from watching the trailer. Damon is excellent, as always, but he's not really called upon to do much except be blandly inspirational, though you have to admire his commitment to bulking up for the part.
The Bad
Conversely, Freeman's not nearly as good as his Oscar nomination would suggest – his attempt at Mandela's accent seems weird and mannered and it's frequently distracting as a result. Similarly, the film's sugar-coating of events is a little too hard to take in places – for example, it seems far-fetched that Mandela's white security team wouldn't display any bigotry whatsoever towards their new black colleagues.
On top of that, the film takes a few liberties with the truth, such as leaving out the fact that the New Zealand team apparently had food poisoning during the final, while you also get the feeling there are more interesting stories being left on the sidelines, such as the role of the team's only black player, Chester Williams (McNeil Hendricks).
Worth seeing?
Invictus is a solid retelling of an undeniably inspirational story but it's unforgivably bland in places and you can't help thinking that it might have worked a lot better as a documentary.
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valda
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Re: Invictus
Beate wrote:Excellent. Now, I am not really a sports fan and still don't understand how rugby works apart from that they squabble over a ball a lot. But sport means a lot to a lot of people (in evidence by those people who didn't go to see this today as they had to watch tennis instead!), and it can unite or divide them. I started blubbering half-way through when the team played with the little black kids and didn't really stop till the end. Gosh, how tiny was Mandela's cell at Robben Island! Now, one world cup isn't going to unify a nation. But what a clever man Mandela was. What a dignified one too. People sat routed to the spot when the credits rolled.
8/10
That's when I started tearing up. I had to keep cleaning my glasses and trying to disguise the fact that I was crying
why can't I just let it out? anyway, Wandsworth was packed, people still coming in long after it started. I know nothing about much about rugby, could remember All Blacks and Jona Lomu from back in the day.I thought the film was great in a sly way. it wasn't too preachy or cheesy but had just the right amount of feeling for the subjects to really draw one in. This film is still with me now which is surprisingly.
preferred locations Shepherds Bush, Westfield, Notting Hill, Central London, Wimbledon, Islington, Wandsworth thanks
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tarantinoed
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Re: Invictus
I loved this film and even found the rugby exciting (which I thought I hated without knowing anything about it). The only slight problem for me was how it put forward the idea that the black ANC bodyguards had no experience of working with white people and distrusted all of them even though I'm sure ANC activists had experience of working with white members of the ANC and South African Communist Party during apartheid.
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Beate
- The Modfather (& Three-Time Prediction Master!)
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Re: Invictus
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... tn=AAKAP2F
From The Times February 5, 2010
Invictus
At long last, Mandela is a Freeman as ‘Madiba’ wins the 1995 rugby World Cup and is Oscar nominated in the process
Kate Muir Recommend?
Clint Eastwood has always seen the world in black and white and believed that raw violence wins the day. Who better then to direct an anti-apartheid film that ends in lengthy and gratuitous rucking? Invictus tells the story of Nelson Mandela’s unlikely decision, early in his presidency, to become a rugby fan and support the once-loathed symbol of apartheid — the Springbok team.
Mandela’s maverick gesture during the Rugby World Cup of 1995 brought a riven South Africa together to support an embarrassingly white team. One player was black; the captain François Pienaar was an Afrikaner and the green and gold of the Springbok strip remained a symbol of white supremacy. But after being booed by whites at a Springboks game, Mandela decided to enter the political-sporting scrum by calling in Pienaar for a showdown over afternoon tea.
Morgan Freeman is the finest screen Mandela so far, and deserves his Oscar nomination. He oozes dignity, with his slow baritone and craggy facial topography, topped with a disarming warmth and simplicity. “Reconciliation begins here. Forgiveness liberates the soul. It removes fear and that is why it is such a powerful weapon,” he booms as your tear ducts twitch.
Mandela’s early days in office are portrayed in crisp West Wing style, but later Eastwood falls into a paint-by-numbers vision of the post-apartheid world.
Pienaar is played by Matt Damon, a rare chance to see the Bourne trilogy’s hero on his tippy-toes, at 5ft 9ins giving a passable impression of being a meaty forward. Soon Pienaar appears slobbed in front of the telly with his mum’s protein shake in a Tupperware sippy-cup. As captain he is on his uppers, with an unfit team boycotted internationally for years, facing humiliation on their own soil. Damon gets angry, swears in an impressively Afrikaner accent, and throws beer cans. He is nicely set up for transformation into a lean, mean apartheid-fighting machine.
Pienaar looks puzzled when Mandela asks him about his “leadership philosophy”. Our captain seems a couple of beers short of a six-pack, but slowly it dawns on him that he must unite his team and his country! The Springboks are sent into the townships to coach schoolboys with egg-shaped balls. Meanwhile Mandela learns the players’ names and wears the Springbok colours, initially to the disgust of his family, who think Pienaar “looks like one of the policemen who forced us out of the house when you were in jail”.
Those famously brutal Afrikaner policemen join Mandela’s security guards, providing a sideshow of black and white secret servicemen clashing, new regime against old. It ends in a sentimental soup of them playing rugby together, earpieces dangling. To create suspense (because we know the score), Eastwood constantly foreshadows a possible presidential assassination and ends up with a McGuffin, an entire story built around an irrelevance. You feel that Eastwood, at nearly 80, just can’t drop the habitual armed vengeance mode of Dirty Harry, yet this film is more Muddy Harry by the time the Springboks beat France in a tropical rainstorm in the semi-finals.
Ah, the rugby. You watch — worried for the cameraman — from beneath the scrum as the heads lock. You hear gristle tearing in tendons, the crack of nose on skull and the squelch of blood. In the World Cup final against New Zealand the part of the All Black wing Jonah Lomu is played by a Humvee. The grinding hell of extra time looks more like a bar-room brawl with a ball than rugby. Also, an expert tells me, “one kick-off didn’t go the full ten yards — he just did a sort of dolly”. But that’s a whole separate debate.
By the time the Springbok team sing the national anthem, which previously they’d dissed as a “terrorist” song, you forgive the rugby. There’s more emotional milking when Mandela gives Pienaar Invictus, the Victorian poem that had inspired him in Robben Island prison. It includes the lines: “My head is bloody but unbowed/. . . I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul”. Invictus may be a rather cheesy way into the story of South Africa, but in the end you’re glad it’s there for a new generation to whom the words “Free Nelson Mandela” are history.
(12A, 134mins)
From The Times February 5, 2010
Invictus
At long last, Mandela is a Freeman as ‘Madiba’ wins the 1995 rugby World Cup and is Oscar nominated in the process
Kate Muir Recommend?
Clint Eastwood has always seen the world in black and white and believed that raw violence wins the day. Who better then to direct an anti-apartheid film that ends in lengthy and gratuitous rucking? Invictus tells the story of Nelson Mandela’s unlikely decision, early in his presidency, to become a rugby fan and support the once-loathed symbol of apartheid — the Springbok team.
Mandela’s maverick gesture during the Rugby World Cup of 1995 brought a riven South Africa together to support an embarrassingly white team. One player was black; the captain François Pienaar was an Afrikaner and the green and gold of the Springbok strip remained a symbol of white supremacy. But after being booed by whites at a Springboks game, Mandela decided to enter the political-sporting scrum by calling in Pienaar for a showdown over afternoon tea.
Morgan Freeman is the finest screen Mandela so far, and deserves his Oscar nomination. He oozes dignity, with his slow baritone and craggy facial topography, topped with a disarming warmth and simplicity. “Reconciliation begins here. Forgiveness liberates the soul. It removes fear and that is why it is such a powerful weapon,” he booms as your tear ducts twitch.
Mandela’s early days in office are portrayed in crisp West Wing style, but later Eastwood falls into a paint-by-numbers vision of the post-apartheid world.
Pienaar is played by Matt Damon, a rare chance to see the Bourne trilogy’s hero on his tippy-toes, at 5ft 9ins giving a passable impression of being a meaty forward. Soon Pienaar appears slobbed in front of the telly with his mum’s protein shake in a Tupperware sippy-cup. As captain he is on his uppers, with an unfit team boycotted internationally for years, facing humiliation on their own soil. Damon gets angry, swears in an impressively Afrikaner accent, and throws beer cans. He is nicely set up for transformation into a lean, mean apartheid-fighting machine.
Pienaar looks puzzled when Mandela asks him about his “leadership philosophy”. Our captain seems a couple of beers short of a six-pack, but slowly it dawns on him that he must unite his team and his country! The Springboks are sent into the townships to coach schoolboys with egg-shaped balls. Meanwhile Mandela learns the players’ names and wears the Springbok colours, initially to the disgust of his family, who think Pienaar “looks like one of the policemen who forced us out of the house when you were in jail”.
Those famously brutal Afrikaner policemen join Mandela’s security guards, providing a sideshow of black and white secret servicemen clashing, new regime against old. It ends in a sentimental soup of them playing rugby together, earpieces dangling. To create suspense (because we know the score), Eastwood constantly foreshadows a possible presidential assassination and ends up with a McGuffin, an entire story built around an irrelevance. You feel that Eastwood, at nearly 80, just can’t drop the habitual armed vengeance mode of Dirty Harry, yet this film is more Muddy Harry by the time the Springboks beat France in a tropical rainstorm in the semi-finals.
Ah, the rugby. You watch — worried for the cameraman — from beneath the scrum as the heads lock. You hear gristle tearing in tendons, the crack of nose on skull and the squelch of blood. In the World Cup final against New Zealand the part of the All Black wing Jonah Lomu is played by a Humvee. The grinding hell of extra time looks more like a bar-room brawl with a ball than rugby. Also, an expert tells me, “one kick-off didn’t go the full ten yards — he just did a sort of dolly”. But that’s a whole separate debate.
By the time the Springbok team sing the national anthem, which previously they’d dissed as a “terrorist” song, you forgive the rugby. There’s more emotional milking when Mandela gives Pienaar Invictus, the Victorian poem that had inspired him in Robben Island prison. It includes the lines: “My head is bloody but unbowed/. . . I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul”. Invictus may be a rather cheesy way into the story of South Africa, but in the end you’re glad it’s there for a new generation to whom the words “Free Nelson Mandela” are history.
(12A, 134mins)
Member No. 1 of the "100 free films in 2020" club. 7 seen Member No. 1 of the "100 free films in 2009 - 2019" clubs. 826 seen Member No. 1 of the "104 free previews in 2008" club. 92 seen -
Beate
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Re: Invictus
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100205/te ... 8abb3.html
Damon wears insoles for Invictus
14 mins ago
Damon has revealed he had to wear insoles while filming Invictus.
The 39-year-old actor plays 6ft 4in South African footballer Francois Pienaar in the film, for which he has been nominated for an Oscar.
Matt said: "Francois is a big guy and I'm an average-sized guy, so we did little tricks of putting the camera higher and framing me to look larger in the foreground and putting a little insole in my shoe to give me another inch of height, and then obviously a lot of work in the gym and on the accent."
He continued: "There was a whole physical challenge for me to get ready for the role because I was playing a very famous man who everyone knows, so like any job, it's a magic trick really. Ultimately if someone doesn't believe you even for a moment then you've failed at your job, so you have to trouble-shoot when you're a year away from doing it.
Invictus is released in cinemas on Friday February 5.
Damon wears insoles for Invictus
14 mins ago
Damon has revealed he had to wear insoles while filming Invictus.
The 39-year-old actor plays 6ft 4in South African footballer Francois Pienaar in the film, for which he has been nominated for an Oscar.
Matt said: "Francois is a big guy and I'm an average-sized guy, so we did little tricks of putting the camera higher and framing me to look larger in the foreground and putting a little insole in my shoe to give me another inch of height, and then obviously a lot of work in the gym and on the accent."
He continued: "There was a whole physical challenge for me to get ready for the role because I was playing a very famous man who everyone knows, so like any job, it's a magic trick really. Ultimately if someone doesn't believe you even for a moment then you've failed at your job, so you have to trouble-shoot when you're a year away from doing it.
Invictus is released in cinemas on Friday February 5.
Member No. 1 of the "100 free films in 2020" club. 7 seen Member No. 1 of the "100 free films in 2009 - 2019" clubs. 826 seen Member No. 1 of the "104 free previews in 2008" club. 92 seen Re: Invictus
I'm a little surprised at some of the lukewarm reviews the film has been getting from the critics. Personally I thought it was a very well-made film on an interesting subject matter, but it may well be that the whole Rugby angle and the fact that the film isn't a straight up biopic on Mandela (and particularly his prison years) is causing the problems here...
And for those of you who do want to see a film that deals with the prison years there is a decent film called "Goodbye Bafana" which centers on the true story his relationship with a white racist prison guard with Dennis Haysbert as Mandela.
And for those of you who do want to see a film that deals with the prison years there is a decent film called "Goodbye Bafana" which centers on the true story his relationship with a white racist prison guard with Dennis Haysbert as Mandela.
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AYBG
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Invictus
To see a trailer or rate this film, please click here »
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, Scott Eastwood.
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.
IMDB
Get free tickets on the forum
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, Scott Eastwood.
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.
IMDB
Get free tickets on the forum
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