Salon.com > Invictus

“Hereafter”: Clint sees dead people

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 18:45:00 +0000

Clint Eastwood has now directed a kazillion movies -- OK, I count 31 feature films, the bulk of them made since 1990 -- and while some are good, some are bad and a whole bunch are in between, let's say this: They're all watchable. He knows where to put the camera and appreciates elegant, restrained cinematography. Actors like to work with him because he doesn't waste their time or try to get inside their heads, and he prefers understated, even dry performances, whether he's making a hard-boiled crime flick or a sentimental weeper.

I'm totally fine with cutting Eastwood a break based on his undeniable status as a national treasure and an iconic figure in Hollywood history. As certain friends are happy to remind me, I've definitely overpraised some of his mediocre outings. But as Clint has grown older and backed away from acting in his own films (he's appeared in only two of his last eight directorial projects), the movies themselves have lost personality and vigor. "Million Dollar Baby" and "Gran Torino" are pictures that have many fans and many haters, but both possess an intensity and specificity of vision you just don't see in handsome, dull, big-budget vehicles like "Changeling" or "Invictus."

Morgan Freeman: Making Mandela sexy

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 01:20:00 +0000

Morgan Freeman hasn't just played God; he actually is the voice of God. He has gazed down from heaven upon penguins, narrating the intricacies of their life-and-death struggles; in Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds," he reveals, in his all-seeing, all-knowing wisdom, that the invading aliens are dying because they have no immunity to diseases that barely faze humans; and, perhaps most significantly, his is the first voice you hear when you turn on the CBS Evening News. The voice of Morgan Freeman is everywhere; it's like God wallpaper.

Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus”: Can rugby heal a nation?

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 03:16:00 +0000

Even though it's based on real events, there are moments in Clint Eastwood's "Invictus" that seem as artificial as the thatch of bright dyed-blond hair on Matt Damon's head. Damon's character here is Francois Pienaar, the captain of the South African national rugby team, the Springboks, which made a historic leap for its country when it won the World Cup in 1995. In our first glimpse of him, he's a bulked-up lug of a guy taking up real estate on his mother's living-room couch, accepting the super-nutritious power shake she's concocted for him. With his button nose and beefy build, he looks as if he's auditioning for the title of World's Oldest Teenager.

Francois will be instrumental in a plan hatched by then-recently elected President Nelson Mandela, played here by the aggressively noble Morgan Freeman. The country's black population -- the majority -- hates the nearly all-white Springboks, seeing them as a relic of apartheid; they attend Springbok matches, but they all too happily cheer for the opposing team. The country's National Sports Council is even making moves to abolish the team, but Mandela intervenes. Wouldn't it be more unifying, he wonders, to make all the people of his country, black and white, love the Springboks? And so he woos Francois, drawing him into a Springbok image makeover that includes sending the team into townships to play ball with the impoverished black kids who live there.