Is Invictus an Oscar Contender?

The new film Invictus is genetically engineered and promoted for the sole purpose of harvesting Oscar Gold. And with the movie’s pedigree, it’ll be hard pressed not to garner one of the 10 Best Picture Nominee Slots next Month...

To Whit-

Director Clint Eastwood is a freakin’ Oscar magnet. He’s directed Hilary Swank, Gene Hackman, Tim Robbins and Sean Penn to Oscars and a strong case could be made that he should have been nominated for the kindly old racist he played in last year’s Gran Torino. The previous 2 Freeman/Eastwood collaborations (Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby) won Oscars for Best Picture (with Freeman nabbing the Best Supporting Oscar for Baby). And it’s well known fact that Eastwood can shoot laser beams out of his nostrils and will never, ever die

Subject Matter- It’s a TRUE inspigoddamnrational story that involves Apartheid and an UNDERDOG team prevailing against ALL ODDS, sure Oscar fodder because you know how people slurp that feel-good shit up. This is an IMPORTANT movie, because you will LEARN something while also seeing huge movie stars play REAL people. If you watch this, you won’t have to feel as guilty when you don’t give that homeless person a dollar even though you really can spare it and just end up renting something like The Ugly Truth.

Will Invictus be nominated for Best Picture? It almost can’t help but be, regardless of merit. With the absence of a viable Holocaust picture this year, Invictus slips in with the Apartheid/True Story Corollary because if one decides to vote against it they just end up looking like a bigoted jackass. Might as well pull for a movie where kids and dogs get run over by something.

Does Invictus have a prayer of winning? Let’s just say it’s too early to tell and the outcome is still, well, Up in the Air...

It’s February 1990, and The Hunt for Red October featuring a skinny Alec Baldwin and a Scottish guy playing a Russian Submarine Commander has just been released into theaters. Also released: “Babyface” Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman, cast against type as an elderly black man), a political prisoner for 20 years and former backup singer for the soul group the Lockheed-Martins. He plans to use his Just-got-released-from-prison swagger to see how many white women he can sleep with and then he can get down to businesses of unifying South Africa. He nixes his Kill Whitey Initiative because it might not foster the atmosphere of peace needed to mollify years of Apartheid

He runs for President. He wins by a mudslide. Now his problems have really begun.

It’s now Mandela’s job to bring together a country in the midst of racial, economic, educational, and sartorial turmoil. He has to do it with one hand tied behind his back and a blindfold. Just to make it harder.

A large part of his new cabinet wants to leave, simply because they don’t believe in what he stands for or they just flat-out hate him. His security detail is peppered with forces from the previous regime (read: White guys), a good percentage of which may have tried to kill him only months earlier. As if things couldn’t get any more awkward, they now have to share the fridges and microwaves in the break room.

Mandela’s head of security Jason (Tony Kgoroge) doesn’t like having to give privileged info to “security” that may still want him dead and now have access to all his whereabouts. One of them also left microwave popcorn in the microwave too long and now the entire goddamn break room smells like burnt popcorn.

Mandela tells Jason, in a stirring speech worthy of an Oscar clip, to forgive, because “Forgiveness liberates the soul”, and any hope of peace has to start from within the government—

--You may now have a moment to be properly inspired. You have something in your eye that looks like a tear—

--has to start from within the government. Mandela then authorizes Jason to mow down whomever’s responsible for the burnt popcorn thing, regardless if he/she is white or black, because that smell can stay in the break room for days.

Sometime in 1994, while doing his Presidential duties at a Rugby game, Mandela notices that the South African team (called the Spring Bokkes) just sucks. If this were American football, they’d be the Lions. If this were basketball, they’d be the Nets. You get the idea.

South Africa hosts the World Cup of Rugby in 1995. If only the Spring Bokkes could improve enough to have a good showing at the World Cup. That would inspire some national unity. Not bloody likely though, as the Bad News Bokkes looks like they’re going to need a lot more than a year, a cartload of better players, and other countries willing to take a dive if they’re going to seriously contend.

Also, the Spring Bokke uniforms are synonymous with the apartheid regime, and an overwhelming faction of Mandela’s countrymen want to disband the Spring Bokke entirely or at least change their uniforms. And in another soul-stirring speech worthy of an Oscar gold, Mandela says the Spring Bokke team will not be disbanded and the uniform colors of White Supremacy Green and The Man Gold will not be changed because to do so would confirm every one of the opposition’s fears and continue the cycle of hate and distrust. He even gets a Jerry Maguire-like “Who’s coming with me” moment. Absolutely inspiring.

But the Spring Bokke team still isn’t very good, and with only a year until the World Cup, things aren’t likely to change.

Or are they?

Mandela has a meeting with the Spring Bokke’s fiery captain François Pienaar (Matt Damon, cast against type as an elderly black man and starring in his second ‘I’ movie this year) and tells him that a strong showing at the World Cup would do a world cup of good for bringing South Africa together and if they play like shit as they have been then Pienaar might as well be throwing fire on gasoline. Okay, maybe it’s not that extreme.

A strong showing at the World Cup? It’s possible, if the Spring Bokkes work together and train harder than they ever have before. Maybe some musical montages would help.

But Pienaar thinks that Mandela want to win the entire tournament, partially because Mandela slips him a note that reads “Win the cup or my secret police will kill your entire fucking family” and partially the President doesn’t invite you into his house for tea if he DOESN’T want you to win...

Will Pienaar and the Bokkes have what it takes to win in front of the world and unite South Africa in something other than hating each other?

Um...yes. Since this is an INSPIRATIONAL true story, you could pretty much figure that out or at the very least look it up. But no one’s going to make a movie about a team that lost in the first round, committed mass suicide in the locker after the game, and a country disintegrated as a result, are they?

Actually that would make a pretty cool movie, but that’s not the movie we’re stuck with. Oh well, Invictus will have to do...

What works with Invictus-

1) Matt Damon’s South African (or Sewth Effrikan) accent takes about a scene to get used to, and before you can say Leo DiCaprio in Blood Diamond, Damon and the audience are comfortable enough in it so it’s not a distraction. Unlike...

2) The final rugby match against New Zealand (gee, I wonder who wins) is very well shot, even if I have no clue how a rugby match is supposed to be played or scored you can probably count on the fingers of one hand how many Americans know anything or even care about Rugby.

3) Damon and Freeman give passable performances, but their only discernible dimension is haloish marshmallow goodness. Freeman plays Mandela as a saint, and Damon plays Pienaar as dogged, determined, and then doggedly determined. It serves the story adequately enough, but it also underlines that we’ve seen it all before in countless other sports movies.

What doesn’t work-

1) For a director not known for over-sentimentality, Eastwood strikes the movie’s only real false note in a scene where Pienaar visits the cell Mandela stayed in. That’s not calculated at all. And those shots of Freeman in prison were way too reminiscent of The Shawshank Redemption... A much, much, much better movie.

2) At its worst, or at least at its most obvious, Invictus is stuck in one-note nobility. As you watch it, you realize the only real conflict in the movie comes from the other teams. While that may serve a decent sized portion of feel-good to those that left cum stains in their pants over Indian kids implausibly winning big on Game Shows last year, it’s just not very compelling. Even TNT knows that conflict drives drama and they had that awful Jada Pinkett Smith Nurse show last summer.

3) Freeman’s South African accent is uneven at best and there are scenes where he seems to be forgetting the accent entirely. Maybe he should have just stayed with his normal voice a la Valkyrie instead of distracting us with his scattershot accent. Freeman’s a great actor, no doubt, but he’s no Meryl Streep.

Overall. Invictus will make an awards splash over the coming months by default. It’s a good enough movie, but to call it great would be as unbelievable as a crappy team coming together to win it all as there’s not a beat that’s not telegraphed 20 minutes before it occurs. The least of the Eastwood/Freeman movies. Still, I hope it wins all kinds of awards because I don’t want to be on Clint Eastwood’s bad side because I’m Asian and we’ve all seen what he can do to Asians in Gran Torino...