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5 stars*****

It’s wonderful to see a combination in a movie where it is both moving and uplifting at the same time. This movie fulfills both criteria with abundance with the end it seems, leaving many of the audience with smiles galore.

I got to the news late; Clint Eastwood is a brilliant director. He takes this real-life movie to great heights without needing to add the usual poor touches that often cloud emotions with faulty dialogue and meager endings just to send the audience out with a smile. He showed us his skills with Million Dollar Baby and more recently with both the Changeling and Gran Torino. Invictus completes an incredible set of four superbly directed movies.

You can tell that Clint Eastwood likes a level of control, he often takes over production as well and invites his son to write the music. Together, the outside influences are greatly reduced and the director is able to complete the vision as he sees it.

John Carlin’s book led Anthony Peckham to write a masterful screenplay. His use of combining the main players, president and rugby player, interlaced with the action of the presidents security team and then latterly with a local township boy gaining the friendship of a white policeman, shows rather than tells how president Nelson Mandela tried to bring together black-and-white sites of a previous rule and worker relationship into a new joint life for South Africa. Of course, we all now know a lot of the arguing and fighting has been between various black groups and tribes of the nation and the world genuinely believes South Africa has made great strides forward from its previous ridiculous state of affairs. Security and crime remain substantial evils.

Morgan Freeman becomes Pres. Mandela and you spend two hours believing you are watching the president not the actor. No doubt South Africans will be able to fault the accents used, but to outsiders, he is the president. In similar fashion Matt Damon uses his considerable skills to come across as a talented rugby player, which is a situation far removed from any American actor.

This is the first movie that uses acting sportspeople (probably many actual rugby players) mixed in with live-action where players are actually playing the game and moving the ball as if a real match is in place. The use of green screens and CGI technology means we don’t have to watch players running and not actually see them kick or pass the ball.

Brenda Mazibuko, played by Adjoa Andoh, gives us an insight as to the advice given to the president at that time in history when he decided to mix politics and sports remembering that most people are not that interested in politics, but most are interested in sports. His advisor, seen recently as Martha’s mother in Dr. Who, convinced us of her officialdom, even when her advice was overwritten by the president.

No doubt, the screenplay left out any of the information which showed the president and the rugby World Cup of 1995 using any tactics that didn’t fit the feel good movie. We weren’t shown any of the horrors inflicted upon the poor South Africans by supporters of the president, instead we were taken through a dream that became reality.

The writer hit just the right targets and the director knew exactly how to present them to us. Usually it’s a lead actor that will grab our attention to make us go and see a movie. While we have that with the lead actors here I’m now in a groove that means I’ll go see any movie that Clint Eastwood directs.

Be warned that this movie plays heavily with your emotions, but you’ll see and feel and share how the world dealt with South African discourse and how a great man in Nelson Mandela, despite the way he’d been previously treated in prison, moved forward his nation. You’ll know you’ve seen a great movie when you share 133 minutes with Invictus.

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