With the ethnic and economic division of the nation following the apartheid process in South Africa, President-elect Nelson Mandela decided to undertake a project to unify the land and the nation through sport. Nelson held bilateral cooperation with the captain of the rugby team in South Africa to form a special team to participate in the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Nelson's mission (as he believes) is to unite the nation through that famous game because he believes that the unification of the earth begins with sport. It is a unique and powerful project begun by Nelson to restore the nation and prevent it from fragmentation and separation.
25 August 1977, Durban, South Africa
14 January 1963, Bristol, England, UK
March 08, 2014
The attraction of the film lies not in any surprise but in Morgan Freeman as Mandela -- so pitch perfect that the line between actor and archival is thin.
December 11, 2009
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.
December 11, 2009
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.
February 05, 2010
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.
December 11, 2009
[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.
July 04, 2010
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.
June 01, 2010
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.'
March 27, 2011
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.
August 26, 2011
Invictus tells the tale in the standard Hollywood way
May 30, 2010
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]
January 15, 2010
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.
December 11, 2009
A work of flawed majesty.
