"I am the master of my destiny, the captain of my soul"

Tonight I went out with permahook-up to see Invictus. Now let's start this off by saying I know nothing about rugby (except the players are kind of sexy in a tough, I kick ass way), and nothing about South Africa (except that some bad stuff has happened there and my cousin's kind-of girlfriend lives there). So needless to say, I went into the whole thing kind of blind.

The story was great and uplifting... a feel good ending. Matt Damon was surprisingly good. And Morgan Freeman was... well, Morgan Freeman.

Now to the not so good stuff. It was sooooo slow. It wasn't long... just slow. Everything seemed to take extra long to accomplish, which leads to my next complaint: it was super repetitive. One scene showed the same shots of the same people doing the same things over and over and over. The climax of the final few minutes of the game took absolutely forever. I understand that they were trying to show many different people's reactions and how the whole country was watching... but really, two minutes of the game turned into 20 minutes in real time, which I find a little excessive.

I felt like nothing was ever really explained. One minute all of the black Africans hate the rugby team because they represent apartheid and the next minute, everyone is cheering for them with really no explanation of why feelings shifted.

My last complaint, and it's the biggest.... during the scene where Mandela lands in a helicopter on the rugby practice field pleeeease pay attention to the song. It is this weird emo punk song about being colorblind that does not fit the feel of the movie AT ALL. Yeah, sure the lyrics kind of work but when it is combined with the African style music of the rest of the movie it just sounds terrible! I literally cracked up in the middle of the scene because I couldn't believe how awkward the song was.

With all of the said, it sends a good message and is a good slice of history that a lot of Americans probably don't know much about. For all of my critiques, I do recommend watching it... once it comes out on dvd that is... save the eight bucks for something of quality... like the next Terminator.