Invictus - An unfortunate "miss"

[Craig]

Posted: 1/4/10 at 9:09am

I may not be in the popular opinion here. And perhaps I went in with elevated expectations. But INVICTUS fell completely flat for me. My main issue was the total lack of character development (except perhaps Mandela). You learn more and get a great feeling of motivation and history with the security guards than with Matt Damon's character. We know little to nothing at the end of the film that we didn't know at the beginning.

While joyous at the end - there was little to no tension leading up to it. And that's not because I knew the outcome. I've seen several movies (i.e. Apollo 13, The Blind Side, etc) where I know the outcome and am still invested. I wasn't invested in the way the story played out.

On a side note - Morgan Freeman's accent went in and out so often it was very distracting.

Now it's not a bad film. It, for me - was just a complete miss.

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/4/10 at 9:57am

I just can't bring myself to see it. This particular historical story has zero appeal to me as a film. It seems like such a calculated "feel good" movie.

[Craig]

Posted: 1/4/10 at 10:00am

That's part of the problem Besty - it is extremely calculated to the point it assumes it doesn't even need to present itself with any "drama" or plot. It just assumes you'll be rooting for the team and Mandela from the getgo.

The Blind Side - while also "calculated" I enjoyed tremendously despite that. It was an interesting story presented interestingly.

I am sure there's an interesting story within Invictus - unfortunately moviegoers will not learn in.

[husk_charmer]

Posted: 1/4/10 at 11:05am

More out of my own curiosity than anything, do they actually reference/quote the poem at all in the film? Cause I've always thought the poem and Nelson Mandela kinda went hand in hand. (Well, since I was aware of who Mandela was)

[strummergirl]

Posted: 1/4/10 at 11:14am

Could not agree more about the lack of character development. Is Francois supposed to represent a lost generation of whites who just succumbed to the apartheid or was his generation apart of the change that ended apartheid? We don't really get an answer. There was a black player (Chester Williams) on Springboks but we got so little of him from the film. But is it not a big deal that the last symbol of white supremacy in South Africa already had a crack with a black rugby player? The actual Francois Pienaar admitted he accepted the racism and apartheid at the time just because it was the status quo but we never saw that on film except that maybe his father's racism was a factor. But Francois never once in the film does anything to show how he felt on the matter of the past.

I do think this was a film that had too much going on. It was more than just a rugby match but as somebody who loves watching sports, and the history of sports in general, every sports film nowadays has to be 'based on a true story' that is transcendent beyond just sports. You can barely do a two hour film about Mandela himself and now you want a movie about how a former symbol of apartheid was used as a uniting force to a country with the engineer being the prisoner turned President? It just was not going to work. The film was certainly better than most sports films done, well-shot especially, but it lacked a certain connection to one of the most important characters in the story on top of terrible Afrikaaner accents from both Damon and Freeman.


Updated On: 1/4/10 at 11:14 AM

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 1/4/10 at 12:53pm

you're not alone in the world, craig.
bill simmons take on invictus

[Roscoe]

Posted: 1/4/10 at 1:01pm

What is the world coming to?

Rob Marshall makes a crappy movie out of a musical and gets slammed for it, even though he'd used largely the same gimmicks in the far fouler CHICAGO.

Clint Eastwood makes a tired and uninteresting little movie, and critics and audiences aren't acclaiming it a masterpiece as they did with the tired and uninteresting MILLION DOLLAR BABY.

Has the entire movie-going world come to its senses?

[strummergirl]

Posted: 1/4/10 at 1:13pm

I like some Clint Eastwood films but he has had some pretty big clunkers in his filmography so I don't consider him some John Ford reincarnate. This film is just so different from anything he has ever done, however. A sports film, the sport involved only has niche popularity in America, tied in with one of the biggest figures of the 20th century. I agree with Bill Simmons if you consider a rushed film to be the same as a lazy film. Some scenes were unnecessary which makes me angrier as some things needed to be explained much better.

I also agree with Craig. The Blind Side never claimed to be anything more than a crowd-pleaser and I enjoyed it more than Invictus.
Updated On: 1/4/10 at 01:13 PM

[Craig]

Posted: 1/4/10 at 1:17pm

Thanks Papa. He wrote exactly what I was thinking almost verbatim- EXCEPT I found Freeman's accent horrible and on and off constantly.

And I, too, liked The Blind Side much much more....

[Stage Door Sally]

Posted: 1/4/10 at 1:34pm

You're far from alone Craig. I saw Invictus over the holiday break with my daughter because she is embarking this week on a trip to South Africa and as part of the trip will be studying Nelson Mandela.

Neither of us liked the film. My daughter said, "How can they take something like this and make it so boring?"

Indeed.

[blaxx]

Posted: 1/5/10 at 2:07am

Not only boring, it was LONG. The anecdote didn't even justify a short film and it was full of cheesy slow motion takes. I thought it was brutal.