The hits and misses of the rugby movie Invictus

 
The Crowd Roar Pro

By Jecker, 19 Dec 2009 The Crowd is a Roar Pro

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Being an Aussie who cheers for the Wallabies and admires the All Blacks, I never thought I’d be rooting for the Boks over either team, but I certainly did while watching Invictus.

It’s a good movie about a great man, and Morgan Freeman gives an Oscar-worthy performance as Nelson Mandela.

Matt Damon, in the flick for marquee value, does a good job, although if you thought he was athletic from watching him play Jason Bourne, you’re in for disappointment.

There’s just one shot of him running – in training – and he’s a little uncoordinated.

There’s no footage, in the first-release print I saw, of him actually playing rugby apart from tight shots of him hanging off the scrum and looking bruised and worried.

The pro-South African actors are okay, the amateurs aren’t. But the movie scores in illuminating a bright, witty and humane Mandela and how he saw that a victory in the 1995 RWC would ease the transition within the country.

The first two reels are excellent, the uncomfortable interplay between Mandela’s black and white bodyguards in particular, but the movie breaks down into cliche when we get to the Big Game.

But before we reach that point, we see the real semi as viewed by Mandela on TV. Poor Mike Katt – Jonah runs over him yet again.

Confusion reigns in the rugby-ignorant US audience when the final game is to be played against the All Blacks, who aren’t sufficiently identified as being from New Zealand until we get a visual of the scoreboard in the Big Game.

Watching the All Blacks beat the Wallabies – most of it in long shot although that could be a lookalike Noddy going over for a score – the Boks decide that they have to stop Jonah, who’s played by Samoan and former Bath back rower Zak Feaunati.

Zak is no Jonah, at least not the way the rugby is shot and cut.

It looks more like league, with everybody barging into one another, and Zak lumbers whereas Jonah sprinted. But then the rugby is played at half pace, most of it consisting of halfback passes and just about all the running being inside passes.

This is, no doubt, because it’s easier to shoot action on a big field if it’s contained.

The sound in the scrums resembles feeding time at the zoo, and the hits are designed for your surround system. I was surprised that Clint, a first rate director, went for the slo-mo, will-it-or-won’t-it go over on Shansky’s droppie.

Surprised he went for Damon walking down the empty tunnel and seeing the enormous crowd. But those crowd scenes are terrific. Clint may not have captured the rugby, but he sure got the rugby folk.

As for the reproduced All Blacks, I’ll leave it to you Kiwis to fill in the players’ names.

The Boks team – I think one of them is supposed to be Ollie – is rather too plump to convince. The arial shot of Capetown will brings sobs from homesick Saffers, and the 747 flyover is pretty dramatic.

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