Film Critic, Paul Lynch - Soft Ball

Nelson Mandela wins the World Cup in Clint Eastwood's glossy 'Invictus', while Margaret Corkery's film debut shows promise

Reviewed: Invictus 3/5 (Clint Eastwood) PG; Mugabe and the White Lion 4/5 (Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson) PG; Astroboy 3/5 (David Bowers) PG; Eamon 2/5 (Margaret Corkery) 15A; Youth In Revolt 2.5/5 (Miguel Arteta) 16

Clint Eastwood's 'Invictus'

'Eamon'

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At the movies, there is nobody more sacred than Morgan Freeman. We've come to worship him for those roles where no one else will do. Need a man to dispatch wisdom in a voice of cool reason? Ring Morgan's agent. How about paternal forgiveness or a heart of gold? You know who to call. Freeman looks out at you from the big screen with those benign, soulful eyes and you feel blessed. When he speaks, real slow, his voice deep with gravel and weighed down with gravitas, he makes music of the mundane. He could talk about the traffic and you'd be transfixed. Freeman has played God twice. Now, in Clint Eastwood's new film Invictus, he plays Nelson Mandela. Morgan Freeman is truly the holy trinity of Hollywood.

Freeman whispers the words of 'Invictus', William Ernest Henley's rousing Victorian poem: "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. And in that moment, nothing is insurmountable." Invictus, though, is not about a matter of life or death, but something less important than that: rugby. And Mandela uses the poem to inspire the Springboks, South Africa's national team, to win the rugby world cup and unite the troubled nation. The film makes it look that easy: build it, and they will come good.

Invictus takes its cues from the John Carlin book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed a Nation. And this being from the po-faced Eastwood, you'd expect a little rough play: a tense dramatic scrum with some head-butting and a few digs to the ribs. Instead, you go in for the huddle and you get a feelgood hug. When the final whistle blows, it triumphs as a shameless crowd-pleaser.

Freeman's Mandela is the kind of guy who leaps out of bed at darkness o'clock and, before he's even standing, has the bed all tidied into place. The newly-elected president spends the rest of the day smoothing out the deep and divisive wrinkles of South Africa. The year is 1995 and the rugby world cup is coming. The Springboks are a mess: on the field, they are led by Matt Damon's earnest captain Francois Pienaar. Damon, bulked up for the role, looks like a meat truck, although his character is little more than a meathead and is given little to tackle. The team is a shambles.

At the start of the film, the camera mucks in among a field of amateur rugby players. It follows the line of play, then rises up to look at a field across the road where young black kids are playing soccer: rugby is the preserve of the privileged white man; a symbol of the old Apartheid. When England play the Springboks, the small number of blacks who turn up do so to support England. It is in this climate that the newly-empowered black government is preparing to change the Spingboks' name and alter the national anthem. But Mandela is against it: do not alienate the white population, he says. Let's include them.

Most of the drama works in this manner: someone is asked to do something that goes against their deep-seated prejudices; then Mandela ruffles them up with some undeniable wisdom. Freeman smiles gently like a know-all and attitudes change that little bit.

It is obvious Eastwood is taking a breather from serious drama. And he isn't pushing for the biopic that Mandela deserves. In Attenborough's Ghandi, the sense of epic struggle, a nation heaving against itself, added to the significance of Ghandi's achievement. Invictus, however, is a ray of sunshine trying to stamp out the shadows. At one point, Mandela goes for a morning walk and his security team fidgets nervously: a van, the kind that usually ferries terrorists, races down the street. It stops in a skid just before them. Hands go to guns. It's the newspaper delivery man.

Invictus is that kind of film. The white South African players visit a township and teach rugby to the black kids. They come away feeling good about themselves. The suspicious black bodyguards in Mandela's security detail learn to trust the white special branch officers and soon it's a smiling party. The feel-good factor reaches fever pitch: the world cup final involves a predictably slow-motion rugby ball tumbling between posts. There is much to be said about the film's message of inclusivity, betterment and forgiveness. But caught up in its wash of euphoria, you almost forget how much gloss it paints on the politics of South Africa.

A tougher African reality is invoked in Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson's documentary Mugabe and the White African. Their film kicks you awake because what you are seeing is happening in Zimbabwe today. This is the disturbing story of white farmer Mike Campbell who goes head to head with a dictator. Campbell bought his land post-independence. He paid the mortgage over 20 years and is regarded as a moral employer. But under Robert Mugabe's 'land reform' policy, he has been told the government is taking his farm.

The film gives the lie to the myth that this is about anything other than racism: white farmers are savagely beaten, their farms given to Mugabe's cronies and not redistributed to the poor population. Campbell, however, refuses to budge and takes a test case to an international SADC court. Armed gangs prowl the edge of the farm. The Campbells live in fear. The case drags, but they stand their ground for it could set a precedent. The film teases out that difficult, perennial problem: if you are being persecuted, how far should you go before you cut your losses and run? Watching Mugabe's iron fist come down violently on the Campbells is unsettling and enraging.

There's plenty of iron fist, too, in Astro Boy, a whizz-bang kids' cartoon with voices from Nicolas Cage and Donald Sutherland. It tells of a young robot with superpowers who learns he was built by an inventor to replace a lost son. The story is fashioned around formula and borrows heavily from Wall-e and The Iron Giant, but it rockets along enjoyably. Our hero gets to make good of his powers against a despotic nasty and for a while I fantasised about setting him loose on Robert Mugabe.

Eamon, the debut film from Irish director Margaret Corkery, refreshes and disappoints in equal measure. It's the story of a loveless relationship: Grace (Amy Kirwan) is a selfish strop. Her sexually frustrated boyfriend (Darren Healy) sleeps on the couch. Their hyperactive son Eamon (an amusing Robert Donnelly) sleeps with mommy in the bed. He really is an Oedipus hex. They go on a beach holiday and their family dysfunction is prodded with gentle humour. Eamon, too, is cinematic: Corkery tells the story through images, not dialogue, with clean and controlled compositions. The first hour is sharply observed, fuelled by small shifts of personal interaction.

You regret, then, when the drama switches into the overwrought, forcing an unsatisfactory resolution. Corkery loses her grip and odd things happen: there's a bizarre gay encounter and a ridiculous car crash plucked straight from a road safety advert. You suspect the script was meddled with, as if somebody said: you can't fuel a drama on the small stuff alone. But you can: masters such as Ozu, Renoir and Bresson made a career out of it. Corkery, too, is unsure who the emotional centre is. We are told it is Eamon, but it's really Grace. Kirwan is an actress to watch and her character is fascinating and troubled. But just when you hope to sympathise and understand her, the film withdraws from her emotionally.

Meanwhile, JD Salinger has passed and Hollywood is still no closer to putting The Catcher in the Rye on screen. Who would play Holden Caulfield? I can imagine Michael Cera if he wasn't so knowing and ironic. Youth in Revolt, directed by Miguel Arteta from the CD Payne novel, is another bastard child of Catcher where an anxious teen throws shapes against the world. It's funnier than it should be, because Cera's Nick Twisp has an alter-ego – a plimsoll-wearing, pencil-tached French man, played also by Cera, who prods him into doing all sorts of badness. Why? For the sake of a girl, of course, played by Portia Doubleday. What Nick really needs is some paternal advice, preferably delivered by Morgan Freeman in that relaxing, dulcet tone: Just relax, take it easy, you're still young, that's your fault, there's so much you have to know.