Invictus is getting pretty great reviews, but none so spectacular as AO Scott’s in the NY Times. Scott stretches back through Eastwood career and puts Invictus in perspective. The film resonates with our time. High praise for Morgan Freeman as Mandela:
And a perennially urgent one in any democracy. Mr. Eastwood and the screenwriter, Anthony Peckham, are too absorbed in the details of the story at hand to suggest historical analogies, but “Invictus” has implications beyond its immediate time and place that are hard to miss. It’s an exciting sports movie, an inspiring tale of prejudice overcome and, above all, a fascinating study of political leadership.
But much of the ingenuity in Mr. Freeman’s performance lies in the way he conveys that idealism and the shrewd manipulation of symbols and emotions are not incompatible, but complementary. Taking power a few years after being released from 27 years of incarceration, Mandela is already a larger-than-life figure, an idol in South Africa and around the world. His celebrity is something of a burden, and also an asset he must learn to use; his moral prestige is a political weapon.
But if “Invictus” is predominantly an absorbing character study of one of the most extraordinary characters of our time, it is also fleshed out with well-sketched minor players and subplots that illuminate the progress of racial rapprochement in its comic human dimension. The black bodyguards and their white colleagues proceed from hostility to wary tolerance to guarded warmth in a way that is pointed without being overstated. And that, for the most part, characterizes Mr. Eastwood’s direction, which is always unassuming, unhurried and efficient. In this film he tells a big story through a series of small, well-observed moments, and tells it in his usual blunt, matter-of-fact way, letting the nuances take care of themselves.
And the Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan is equally moved:
Eastwood, who will be 80 next year, understands the flow of narrative in a way younger directors might envy. Working here with co-stars Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, he doesn’t allow anything, especially not splashy technique, to get in the way of simply telling a story. Over the last several years, he’s become as much of a brand name as Pixar when it comes to audience satisfaction that you can count on. The story he tells, based on a script by Anthony Peckham, is far from the ordinary great-man tale. It focuses on one particular moment in history when the newly elected Mandela, played by Freeman, tried something so brazen, so risky, that his closest advisors were not only against it, but they also considered it political suicide.
