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What Eastwood has done is to assemble a cast of American and South African actors and allow them to create something moving, exciting, and improbably true.
Freeman-as-Mandela is an actor all dressed up with no place to go -- at least, nowhere we didn't already know he was headed.
The story of how Nelson Mandela chose the white-supported national rugby team, the Springboks, to become a symbol of national reconciliation is uncharacteristically optimistic for Eastwood.
[T]he epitome of Hollywood filmmaking in ways both good and bad: uplifting, overlong, ambitious in scope but simple in moral vision, well-crafted but inured to irony.
A work of flawed majesty.
Eastwood makes moving pictures that seldom collapse under the burden of sentiment. He has a muscular understanding of how kernels of wisdom needn't become caramel corn.
Invictus tells the tale in the standard Hollywood way
Is it schmaltzy? A little. Is it good anyway? Yes. It's not trying to reinvent the wheel but it understands what it is and that the best place to put its focus is not the rugby field.
Invictus hits all the right formula notes of both the biopic and the underdog sports movie, making it impossible to hate. He also hits those notes so insistently and with such a lack of grace that he makes it a difficult movie to like.
A narrative divide that never quite comes together, despite some truly uplifting moments. And seems unable to decide whether it wants to be a sports movie or a political biopic. Invictus: Or rather, 'I am the rugby captain of Mandela's soul.'
A narrative divide that never quite comes together, despite some truly uplifting moments. And seems unable to decide whether it wants to be a sports movie or a political biopic. Invictus: Or rather, 'I am the rugby captain of Mandela's soul.'
Despite hewing fairly closely to the facts, has trouble seeming truthful. Practically everyone behaves like an allegorical symbol rather than a person, a problem the script anticipates and acknowledges but only feebly attempts to solve. [Blu-ray]
... less a film than a memorial: handsome, stately, well-meaning and dramatically inert.
Eastwood's dull Invictus receives a lackluster welcome to home video.
At its very essence a classically Hollywood, ultra-populist, inspirational underdog sports movie--and a well executed one at that.
This amalgamation of inspirational themes cuts a new notch on Eastwood's well-used viewfinder.
...a fitting tribute to a great man and a fine inspirational sports movie, too. (Blu-ray Edition)
...a polished, well-made, and unaffectedly inspiring motion picture about an inspiring individual and an inspiring victory.
Not one of Eastwood's best, but at times the story is quite moving. And, you can't help but cherish the performance by Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. Nicely done, Morgan. Paul Chambers, CNN.
Freeman's Mandela is deeply flawed, single-minded when it comes to his job, and has a way with one-liners. In short, he's an Eastwood hero.
The half that's good involves watching Morgan Freeman hitting not only the cadences of Mandela's oratory but the Gandhi-like calm of the man.
A noble and compassionate work that in its later scenes manages successfully to invest our emotions in the triumph of an important - if overlong! - sporting victory.
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