Game without frontiers

Invictus, 12A
Nationwide

Gosh, Clint Eastwood will keep thinking of new ways to impress us, the cheeky little monkey. First it was the Dirty Harry and the spaghetti western characters and then he shifted to the director’s chair and ever since it’s been one different thing after another: Unforgiven; Mystic River; Million Dollar Baby; Flags of Our Fathers; Letters from Iwo Jima; Changeling and now Invictus, which tells the story of South Africa coming together for the 1995 rugby world cup. This is not a nuanced film, or even a sophisticated one. It has a story to tell and unapologetically tells it, often quite cheesily, Richard Attenborough-style. But it is probably enjoyable and rousing enough, and does feature a lovely performance by Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, which is only fair. He did make us very sad about those penguins so does rather owe us. I would also like to add this in the unlikely instance I have any Vogue readers on board today: what with Mandela’s calamitous shirts and a rugby team sponsored by Cotton Traders, I don’t think I have to tell you what a fashion nightmare this film is. My dears, I scarcely knew where to look!

The film, which is based on true events and the book by John Carlin, is set in 1994, with Mandela, having been released from his long imprisonment, now serving as the country’s first post-apartheid president. The opening shots show images of posh, snotty white boys playing rugby interspersed with shots of poor, barefooted black boys playing football on a piece of wasteland. This is not a subtle film, like I said. Anyway, racial tensions run high and Mandela’s immediate challenge is ‘balancing black aspirations with white fears’ as exemplified by his own security team, composed of new black and old white officials, who eye each other up with great hostility.