Review of Invictus (2009) by Stephen S — 03 Sep 2011

Was really good until the final rugby match, which was incredibly boring for the most part. Rugby is hardly that mainstream of a sport where one would take for granted the viewer's knowledge of the game.

Plus, this is an american-made film, and nobody in america watches rugby, so I pose the question, why is the game and its rules so poorly explained? I honestly tried to get into the rugby match scenes (which were just wall-to-wall sports with crowd and character reaction shots, by the way).

However, not knowing anything about the game, it was very difficult to understand what was going on in the match. Granted, they did show the score from time to time on a Jumbotron kind of screen, but I didn't know who was scoring/in the lead until after it had already occurred.

Now, if this was completely a rugby movie, the blame would be on me, but it's not...it's a political story for the most part, and thus, I expected at least SOME explanation as to how the game is played.

That aside, it's a very good film...at least the political parts are. I'm not a huge fan of Matt Damon, but he's really good in Invictus, even though he's never played an athlete before in a film.

And Morgan Freeman is really in his element here...the idea of Freeman portraying Nelson Mandela in a film is really a no-brainer, so I ask, why did it take so long for someone to come up with this idea? Check out Invictus if you like political dramas, or are partial to Morgan Freeman films.

..just be prepared to be confused during the sports scenes, unless you have a complete understanding of the game of rugby.