Field of Dreams

Clint Eastwood has had a busy decade, having made 10 celebrated films, including the Academy Award-winning Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters From Iwo Jima, and last year’s Changeling and Gran Torino.

It’s no small feat to churn out that much quality product, and his latest is just as good.

The legendary and prolific Hollywood player is closing out the 2000s with the very-good South African rugby docudrama Invictus, based on John Carlin’s Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation.

Starring Morgan Freeman as the popular South African leader, the film follows the determined steps he took to bring back together a nation torn by apartheid, with the years leading up to the all-as-one-esque, 1995 World Cup rugby match in South Africa as its exciting backdrop.

Matt Damon plays François Pienaar, the captain of the Springboks rugby team – the blond, blue-eyed man tasked with helping Mandela bridge the differences between blacks and whites through the sheer power of the sport.

That thing I said about achieving no small feats…it also applies to the monumental task Mandela and Pienaar set out to accomplish from the rugby field.

The nation’s black majority wasn’t keen on the Springboks, who – gasp! – wore green and gold, unpopular colors associated with oppresion, but, natch, where some would have seen an impossibility the two saw a challenge that needed to be met.

As the wise politico put it, he was banking on a human calculation, one that paid off quite nicely.

Invictus works on two levels: as a biopic of sorts – although it doesn’t delve into Mandela’s past or his personal life too much (although we see Pienaar visit the president’s prison cell in one scene, and in another, we sense familial tension after an exchange between Mandela and his estranged daughter) – and as a thrilling sports movie.

Freeman is majestic as Mandela, who many years ago handpicked the actor to play him in any eventual biopic, while Damon does a beautiful, kinda subdued supporting job that I don’t think should go unnoticed.

I hardly ever cry at movies anymore – I came rather close with Julie & Julia, when Julia Child received a copy of her book – and even though Eastwood definitely wants us to worry for Mandela’s safety and health, sprinkling an ominous scene here and there, it was Invictus’ edge-of-your seat climax that had me really close to tears toward the end.

I’m a sucker for a win.

My Rating ***1/2

Photo: Warner Bros.