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100It's an exciting sports movie, an inspiring tale of prejudice overcome and, above all, a fascinating study of political leadership.
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88Eastwood's modest approach to these momentous events shames the usual Hollywood showboating. In a rare achievement, he's made a film that truly is good for the soul.
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88Clint Eastwood, a master director, orchestrates all of these notes and has us loving Mandela, proud of Francois and cheering for the plucky Springboks. A great entertainment. Not, as I said, the Mandela biopic I would have expected.
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88This movie depicts an unlikely intersection of sports and leadership in ways that manage to be inspiring and insightful without ever becoming schmaltzy or preachy.
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88Invictus, which is Latin for "unconquered," gives the poem several meanings in the context of the film. It also applies to Eastwood, who, as one of America's greatest storytellers, finds enthralling tales and fashions them with finesse and an indomitable spirit.
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88What makes it special is Eastwood's ability to artfully and concisely tell a story, and Morgan Freeman's wonderfully understated turn as South African President Nelson Mandela.
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83How is Invictus as a sports movie? Let's just say that its lump-in-the-throat climax is predictable, but that doesn't mean it's less than earned.
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80Instead of a thriller, war movie or western, the director has turned out a stirring drama about South African leader Nelson Mandela, blending entertainment, social message and history lesson.
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80Damon, beefed up for the occasion, makes Pienaar a stalwart yet courtly figure. Freeman infuses Mandela's speeches with the same gentleness and gravity he's brought to his numerous God roles and the Visa Olympics commercials. But the real deity here is Eastwood, still chugging away handsomely in his 80th year.
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80Inspirational on the face of it, Clint Eastwood's film has a predictable trajectory, but every scene brims with surprising details that accumulate into a rich fabric of history, cultural impressions and emotion.
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80A win-win situation in which a mainstream feature works equally well as stirring entertainment and a history lesson about a remarkable convergence of sports and statesmanship.
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75Freeman's Mandela, however, is pretty marvelous -- so persuasive in gesture, in bearing, in that signature mix of gravitas and twinkle, even in accent -- that when a shot of the real Mandela appears over the final credits, it's momentarily jarring to realize you've been watching an impersonation.
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75Damon is becoming one of the truest, most reliable actors of his generation. And Eastwood has more films in development, proving, at 79, that 79 is just a number like any other.
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75As always, Freeman is a one-man charm offensive.
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75It's never less than worthy and entertaining, but the importance of Invictus doesn't broaden as it goes along. It narrows.
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75Invictus, which features outstanding performances from both its lead actors, succeeds wonderfully on its simplest level, as a portrait of political genius.
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75Freeman portrays Mandela not as a saint but as a man who knows he has the political freedom of being seen as one; it's a majestically two-dimensional performance with glimpses of a third dimension peeking through.
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75Eastwood has crafted something that works both as a sports drama and as an examination of the birth pains of the racially unified South Africa.
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75The focus of Invictus is less on Mandela's psychology than his willpower and political astuteness.
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75Not only does Invictus tell a remarkable story of a remarkable man, but it also illustrates how sports can be a salve to a wounded community. And that's something New Orleanians can certainly appreciate.
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75It's not a great film, but parts of it are outstanding.
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75It's a simplistic, superficial approach to a real-life story that marginalizes most historical details not involving scrums and tackles. It's also pretty effective, in spite of the gloss.
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70Freeman is so in-tune with the former South African president's persona you can't take your eyes off him.
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70A mildly rousing and reasonably satisfying picture about one man's efforts to mend the rifts among his countrymen.
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70The wonder of Invictus is that it actually went down this way.
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67Narratively, we all know where the trajectory of the story is headed, thus the culminating match (nearly 20 minutes) takes up too much screen time without adding anything new to the drama.
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67Invictus has an understated grace, but too often it comes across as hero-worshipy.
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60A temperate, evenhanded perhaps overly timid film about an intemperate time in South Africa.
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60Eastwood hits all the right notes in exactly the right order, but it's his least personal film for a while.
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60The movie isn't adventurous, but I'm sure glad it exists.
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Like every Eastwood production, Invictus is stately, handsomely mounted, attentive to detail right down to the Marmite adorning the team's breakfast buffet, and relentlessly conventional. As a portrait of a hero, the movie effortlessly brings a lump to the throat (Freeman gives a subtly crafted performance that blends Mandela's physical frailty with his easy charm and cerebral wit); as history, it is borderline daft and selective to the point of distortion.
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60Anthony Peckham's script is formulaic, woodenly reverent, and devoid of real dramatic tension.
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50The result is earnest, admirable and more than a little dull -- a pedestrian movie about a remarkable subject.
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50As a non-South African, I can't speak to the accuracy of the movie's racial politics, but they feel insultingly vague.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 36 out of 56
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Mixed: 9 out of 56
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Negative: 11 out of 56
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NikkoC.1
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RossW10Excellent movie. Well done!