MOVIE REVIEW: Invictus

Tonight I went to an advance screening of the movie "Invictus" at the Birmingham Uptown Palladium. I received the tickets courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. "Invictus" tells the true story of the events leading up to the 1995 world championship win of the South Africa rugby team.

Morgan Freeman plays Nelson Mandela who in 1994 was only a few years into his presidency in South Africa. Mandela is looking for ways to bring and whites and blacks into one united South Africa. White South Africans loved the country's almost all white rugby team while the team represented all things apartheid to Black South Africans. South African had won the right to host the world rugby finals, which meant that not only would all of South Africa be watching the finals but also over a billion people from all over the world. Mandela decides that the South African rugby team has to win the championship!

Mandela befriends the caption of the South African rugby team, played by Matt Damon, and encourages him through example to lead his team to greatness even in the face of insurmountable odds. Watching the movie, it is amazing to me how something as simple and basic as sports can break down barriers of hate and unite people who previously felt they had nothing in common.

The move was wonderful. The story was remarkable and heart warming. My only problem with the movie was the length - 2 hours and 10 minutes! But I guess that Clint Eastwood, who directed this movie, found it was not easy to tell this type of story in a normal movie length.

The film's title "Invictus" is from a poem of the same name written by a British poet. Mandela read this poem while in prison and he sends a copy of the poem to the rugby caption to encourage him. The poem sums up the entire movie -

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

-

"Invictus" opens this Friday, December 11th. Please check it out...