Verdict: stick, but not for John Carlin’s book
Aside from Morgan Freeman, who makes a fabulous Nelson Mandela, there’s this to savor about Invictus, a rosy tale of racial reconciliation neatly wrapped in a triumphalist sports movie: The film is blessedly free of Obama parallels. Also, we could use a happy global moment, and Eastwood picks one out of the otherwise rocky history of South Africa, when the country’s first post-apartheid president stepped out of the jail where he’d languished for 27 years and firmly set aside revenge politics in favor of national unity.
More than most, Mandela understood the cohesive power of the symbol—in this case, the bright green uniform of the South African rugby team the Springboks, echoing the flag equally beloved by whites and hated by blacks under apartheid. Adapted by South African writer Anthony Peckham from a book by former London Independent journalist John Carlin, Invictus tells the story of how Mandela, with help from the Afrikaner team captain, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon, gym-pumped into Michelin Man and oozing fair play), turned a World Cup rugby match into a moment of rainbow solidarity.
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