Friday, December 11, 2009
PHOTOS |
COMING SOON|
EXAMINER.COM FILM ARTICLES
||HOME
Friday, December 11, 2009
MOVIE REVIEW
Invictus
All The King's Men, And Warriors To Unite A Nation
Morgan Freeman as South African President Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon as
Francois Pienaar in Clint
Eastwood's "Invictus", which opened across North America today.
Warner Brothers
By Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
Friday, December 11, 2009
Alas, perhaps the magic can't continue.
Clint Eastwood's directorial brilliance gets scuttled with "Invictus",
which opened today in theaters across North America.
What Mr. Eastwood did so well with "Letters From Iwo Jima" (based on Iris
Yamashita's books) he does so poorly here with adapted material from Anthony Peckham for his latest film, which was shot barely ten months ago and wrapped in
April.
Likely to be nominated for an Oscar, Morgan Freeman is majestic as "Madiba" (aka
President Mandela), enunciating each spoken word as if giving a dictation.
Mr. Freeman has the look and essence of Mr. Mandela and you can see that he has
studied the real-life man well. The problem is that substance-wise and
story wise "Invictus" rings hollow, a tepid film that does justice to neither
Mr. Freeman nor Matt Damon's sincere effort as Springboks captain Francois
Pienaar.
It seems that when Mr. Eastwood chronicles historical real-life black
figures such as Charlie "Bird" Parker, and here, he falters. Under his
direction "Invictus" feels robotic, stagnant and even sleepy, only occasionally
bolstered by gripping sequences on the rugby field in Johannesburg (which forms
the bulk of the film's final third), or via visual effects or camera
stylizations that prove redundant or wholly unnecessary.
Worst yet, the music score by Kyle Eastwood and Michael Stevens is misplaced, as
is the Daniel Po-written song "Colorblind".
As sung by Overtone, "Colorblind" sounds more like an insult than an
accompaniment, and has a corny, empty ring to it.
Though the film begins with his Sunday, February 11, 1990 release from Robben
Island, audiences expecting to see a story about Mr. Mandela's resurrection
after 31 years of prison will be disappointed, for "Invictus" is about the
former president's affect on Francois Pienaar and the drive to make a torn
nation proud again. It's not that "Invictus" is necessarily a bad film,
it's more a disappointing and incomplete one.
You wonder -- as one may have with Michael Mann's "Ali" film in 2001 --
whether the important subject matter would have fared better in another
director's hands.
In 1993 Morgan Freeman himself directed Danny Glover in another South Africa
film drama, "Bopha!", and while it was well-reviewed but less commercially
successful than this film likely will be, it had a r
Note: At 79, Mr. Eastwood's energy and vigor haven't waned. He's
currently filming the sci-fi mystery thriller "Hereafter" with Mr. Damon, and
the locations are Paris, London, Hawaii and San Francisco. "Hereafter" is
expected to be released next December.
With: Tony Kgoroge, Patrick Mofokeng, Matt Stern, Julian Lewis Jones, Anjoa
Andoh, Marguerite Wheatley, Leleti Khumalo.
"Invictus" is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture
Association Of America for brief strong language. The film's running time is
two hours and 14 minutes.
Read more movie reviews and stories from Omar
here.
PHOTOS |
COMING SOON|
EXAMINER.COM FILM ARTICLES
||HOME