"Unforgiven" - "Deserve's Got Nothing to Do With It."

SPOILERS ahead.

I was going to write about Unforgiven a few months back when I was covering one western a month, but I got a bit tired of writing about westerns and shelved it. Then a few weeks ago my friend Robie Malcomson asked me to be on his philosophy podcast, Knowing You Know Nothing, to discuss Unforgiven. I figured if I was going to rewatch the movie and prep for the podcast, then I should write an article about it, as well. The podcast we recorded is more focused than this article, so definitely give it a listen for a more philosophical discussion of the film (though we do talk about it in regards to westerns, too). This article will have a little crossover with the podcast, but the podcast was a much more collaborative discussion of the film whereas this article is all my own rambling thoughts. I hope you enjoy both.

The Crown Jewel of Revisionist Westerns.

I’m not going to get into a “history of the western” thing here because I’ve done it before plenty of times. Most of my favorite westerns are considered “revisionist” westerns, which is to say they aren’t like the old John Wayne movies. I do like more traditional westerns (Open Range, Tombstone, most of Clint Eastwood’s early work, etc.[though some would claim that these are revisionist too, but I consider them more traditional]), but in general I gravitate more towards films like The Proposition, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. 

Unforgiven is the crown jewel of revisionist westerns for me. This film was Clint Eastwood completing his western career by revisiting the genre to turn it on its head. This was a film that acknowledged death, fear, and realism in a genre that rarely does in a meaningful way. Most importantly, it presented a real world in which there are no heroes and villains. There are just people that do things, and it’s much more random than any of us are comfortable admitting. Okay, this is getting way too vague; let me get into some specifics.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Unforgiven is the character of Will Munny. He is essentially an old version of one of Eastwood’s past characters, though more evil than a typical Eastwood “hero.” Will was apparently a drunken maniac who mistreated animals and killed anyone, including women and children. In most westerns, a character like this wouldn’t make it to old age. So in many ways, Unforgiven is about what would happen to a western villain if he mellowed out in old age. 

Will Munny is openly ashamed of his past. He constantly tells everyone that he isn’t like he used to be anymore, mainly thanks to his departed wife. Will is constantly being reminded by those around him, mainly the Schofield Kid and Ned, about all the terrible shit he did in the past. But it makes him visibly uncomfortable to talk about it, and when does, it’s only to claim he’s not like that anymore. 

But Will isn’t just a regretful man. He’s actually more of a reluctant bad guy. How many movies have we seen, especially superhero movies, in which the hero has a skill he/she does not want to use and spends most of the movie swearing off that life but ultimately ends up embracing who they really are? I fucking hate that character arc at this point because it’s so common. Oh really, the Hulk is done being the Hulk? Batman is done being Batman? Wolverine isn’t taking the claws out anymore? Give me a fucking break. But this arc is actually compelling in Unforgiven for multiple reasons.

First off, Will is not a hero, and he’s not out to do good deeds. What always annoys me about reluctant superheroes is that they are just being selfish. I get that it adds to their character, and sacrificing your regular life to be a hero would be a tough choice, but they’re still fucking superheroes. I don’t feel bad or care if Bruce Banner doesn’t want to turn huge and green, just do it and help people out, you fucking loser. With Will, it makes sense that he wouldn’t want to go back down that road. He thinks he’s a changed man, and much like how he doesn’t want to drink whiskey anymore, he’s afraid that one step down that road will lead him right back where he was.

Secondly, it’s not nearly as black and white as most reluctant heroes’ situations. Will is going to do something “bad” no matter what. He’s going to go kill two men. Sure, he convinces himself that they are monsters and that they mutilated a woman, but he’s still going to kill people. (Not to mention that Delilah is not nearly as bad as the stories claim, but I’ll get to that more in the next section). Will seems to believe that as long as he doesn’t drink whiskey, he can dip his toes back into the murder for hire game without completely reverting back to his old ways. And he’s right. He and the Kid kill the two cowboys, and that’s that for him, until he finds out that Little Bill killed Ned.

Once he finds out about Ned, Will starts drinking again. Now he’s diving headfirst back into his old ways because he’s pissed off, and he wants to be the old Will. While the film doesn’t make anyone a complete hero or villain (although Little Bill is pretty close to being a straight up villain), I still find myself thinking, “Fuck yeah!” when he grabs that bottle of whiskey from the Kid. 

Perhaps I’m not supposed to react that way, especially since the movie spends so much time ruminating on death. But this is where Saul Rubinek’s character comes into play. He is definitely going to write about the event, and he’s most likely going to embellish it to make it more palatable. So while Will and the Kid may actually grapple with the deaths they cause, the writer is there to continue the cycle of trivializing death in the interest of profit and entertainment, and if that’s not an indictment of the western genre, I don’t know what is.

While Will is the main character of this film, death is the focus. You typically do not see death presented as it is in Unforgiven, and you definitely don’t have scenes in which it’s discussed so much. While a lot of characters die quickly, there are a few slow moments in the film that are prolonged for a reason. The death of the more innocent of the two cowboys, Davey, is the most important. 

After Will shoots Davey (he had to take the gun from Ned, who could not bring himself to do it, which is another rare moment for a western), Davey slowly dies. His age, pain, and fear make this death much more real than a typical western death. He cries out and is generally terrified of dying. It’s realistic, and it’s unsettling. This is important because you can have characters talk about death all you want, but if it’s not presented in a real manner, it’s just talk. Because of Davey’s death, Will and the Kid’s conversation later on holds much more weight.

Aside from having some great quotes, Will’s discussion of killing with the Kid is truly deep. The Kid is clearly not cut out for it, and Will is morosely talking about the power of it. You’re not just ending a life, you’re taking away their future, as well. The Kid didn’t think he would feel this way about it. He thought, like in the stories he has undoubtedly read, it would be simple and exciting. Instead, in reality, he shot a guy in an outhouse, and he feels horrible about it. Will, the seasoned veteran, has come to terms with this long ago, but that doesn’t mean he’s at peace.

We know that Will is still tortured because of his own brush with death. When he thinks he’s dying, he talks about being scared and seeing dead people. He is scared of what is going to happen to him after he dies because he’s done so many terrible things. Will can handle killing better than the Kid and Ned, but that doesn’t mean all the killing hasn’t affected him. Will fears for his soul, and if there is judgment after this life, he’s right to fear for it. For Will, killing is not only about taking away someone else’s life, it’s also about condemning your own soul. He may be able to move on in this life (and apparently prosper in dry goods, if the epilogue is to be believed), but he knows he will ultimately pay for what he’s done. And that’s what makes Unforgiven so amazing. In this western, everyone gets what’s coming to them, eventually.

“Deserve’s Got Nothing to Do With It.”

The podcast episode I did covers the theme of justice in Unforgiven in plenty of detail, but I still want to cover it a bit in this article, as well. The above quote sums up the movie for me. Death and killing at any time, but especially in the old west is more random and chaotic than any of us would like to admit. Good, bad, or in between, people just die. Someone might be drunk during a gunfight. Someone might freeze up. A gun might misfire. And someone who doesn’t “deserve” to die will die. 

The line said to Little Bill before he is killed applies to much more than just his death. In fact, it applies probably the least to him. Aside from being a representative of the law, Little Bill is not a good person. And some people (Will, certainly) could argue that Bill does deserve to die because of what he did to Ned. But the idea of someone deserving something is more interesting when you look beyond Bill.

The whole plot is the result of a group of prostitutes seeking justice for a woman getting cut up by a cowboy. When they are treated as equals to horses and essentially property, they (mainly Alice) decide to take matters into their own hands. Justice has not been served in their eyes. And the cowboys deserve to die.

But do they? Davey certainly doesn’t as he was hardly a participant in the cutting. And the other cowboy doesn’t deserve to die, either, if we’re going with the eye for an eye type of justice. Delilah does not look that bad after her cuts heal, and she doesn’t seem to want the same “justice” that Alice wants. The cowboys do not deserve to die (they deserve more punishment than giving up some ponies, for sure, but a death sentence seems extreme to me), but like Will says, that has nothing to do with it. The cowboys have to die to make a statement. If you attack these prostitutes, you could end up dead.

In this way, the line is not just about how random life and death is, but it’s also about perspective. Little Bill’s idea of what he deserves is not the same as Will’s. The prostitutes think the cowboys deserve more than what they got. So deserve has nothing to with it and everything to do with it.  

The line is so great because it really applies to life in general. It’s essentially a better way of saying, “Life’s not fair.” (It’s also a better, and less dismissive, way of saying, “Shit happens.”) Talking about fairness always sounds a bit childish to me, so we need a better line as adults when life fucks us over, and “Deserve’s got nothing to with it” is a pretty damn good replacement. I’m not sure why, but that line makes me accept the randomness of life more than a line about fairness. 

Why Do I Own This?

I’m obviously a fan of westerns of all kinds, and this film is a must own. I’ve watched it at least twenty times.

Random Thoughts 

I always got the sense that Alice and Little Bill had a history together.

It's fucking crazy that Eastwood was playing a tired old man back in 1992.

The Schofield Kid can't even cuss realistically. Fuckin' poser...

"Hell, they even cut her teats." How is that worse than having your eyes cut out? 

"She ain't got no face left." Uh, her face really doesn't look that bad after it heals. I think Delilah would feel better about things if it wasn't for everyone talking about how worthless she is now.

So Will is only good at killing and shit when he's drunk? It's like that Family Guy episode where Peter can only play the piano when he's drunk.

Will's kids look very confused and troubled as he explains why animals hate him and are getting their revenge on him. Of course, how else do you react to such shit?

"You going to hump 'em a thousand times?!"

"I guess they got it comin'." Do they? Will's even adding to the story now: "Cut her fingers off…"

"I'll shoot for the queen, and you'll shoot for...well...whomever."

Man, Saul Rubinek gets on my fucking nerves in this movie.

"I just don't want to get killed for lack of shooting back."

"Shit and fried eggs." Is that a saying?

"I was tasting the soup two hours after I ate it." I always think of this line when I shave off my beard.

If you want to play the Unforgiven drinking game, just take a drink every time Ned says, “Jesus, Will.” Take a drink every time Will says, “I ain’t like that no more.” Take a drink every time Little Bill says, “Duck.” And take a shot every time someone says, “They cut her teats off.” You’ll be puking an hour in.

I always forget that there's a scene in this movie with Morgan Freeman asking Clint Eastwood about jacking it.

"Duck, I says."

"Innocent of what?"

I want a prequel. Unforgiven: The Drunken Misadventures of Will Munny.

"Well, you sure killed the hell out of that fella today."

God, I love how Will says, "A sign on him in front of Greely's!"

There should've been a Hugo Stiglitz-like guitar riff when Will takes his first drink of whiskey.

"You'd be William Munny, out of Missouri. Killer of women and children."

"That's right."

"I'll see you in hell, William Munny."

"Yeah."

..

"American Sniper" Is a Great Movie. Key Word: Movie.

American Sniper

Movies based on true stories are always prominent during awards season, but this year it seems like overload. True stories are great for getting the audience to connect with the material (“This really happened!”), but they are also subject to controversy. The controversy isn’t about accuracy because no sensible person expects a 2+ hour movie to tell an entire life or event; it’s about changing too much (the common complaint about Selma), or it’s about the subject of the film in general (in this case Chris Kyle in American Sniper).

You will find very little controversy within American Sniper. But check the newspaper (the Evansville Courier ran a cartoon last week that essentially compared Chris Kyle to a terrorist), television (Bill Maher took issue with Kyle’s heroic portrayal), or the always happy internet (Google “Chris Kyle” and you’ll find results on the first page that refer to him both as a “hero” and a “monster”), and it is obvious that there is controversy about Kyle. The great thing about American Sniper is that you have to look for the controversy away from the film. It does not force the conversation on you. Some are degrading the film for that very reason, but it’s actually the best part about it. Plus, it is possible to come away from the film with complex thoughts and emotions (my wife and I certainly did); this is not some American brainwashing propaganda film.

American Sniper is based on the book co-written by Kyle about his life, military career, and acclimatization back to regular life. (Full disclosure: I have not read the book yet.) So while many people take issue with America’s involvement in Iraq at all, Kyle presents it as a noble endeavor. Because of that, this film is reminiscent of We Were Soldiers, the Mel Gibson Vietnam film. That film largely ignored the politics of the war and presented a straightforward war film about the soldiers instead of the typical Vietnam film that dealt with the politics and chaos of it all. Most movies about conflicts in the Middle East are almost solely focused on the politics of war as well, and, unsurprisingly, audiences don’t want to see that because the real events are still relevant and fresh in our minds. American Sniper, for better or worse, gives audiences what they want to see: a simplified version of the war starring a hero you can root for. Ask anyone who has seen the film, they will tell you it’s amazing. It seems that the regular audience member wants a movie like this, and I am inclined to agree with the masses on this one.

American Sniper, while too simplified (more on that later) at times, is an excellent character study anchored by a great, almost unrecognizable Bradley Cooper and tense, well-done action sequences. Cooper is the true standout of the film. It’s not my favorite performance of the year (mainly because I take issue with performances that are essentially impressions of well-documented famous people), but it is one of the most impressive transformations this year. (By the way, “year” still applies to 2014 since this came out in limited release in December.) Cooper disappears in this role mainly by bulking up, but it’s his voice work and mannerisms that impressed me the most. He’s been nominated for an Oscar three straight years now, but this is the first time he’s truly deserved it.  

Cooper’s performance alone could carry the film, but thankfully director Clint Eastwood handles all of the war action quite well, showing everything in a very straightforward manner. The action scenes don’t attempt to place you in the war zone with a shaky camera and chaos. Instead, they are very traditional sequences, which is refreshing in this age of ultra-realism in movies. Eastwood also did a great job of portraying the paranoia Kyle felt back in America. Scenes that would seem very plain under other circumstances, like a child’s birthday party, felt as if they were taken from a tense spy thriller. In fact, the scenes portraying Kyle’s PTSD were more effective than the action, which is a testament to Eastwood’s ability as a director.

As for the simplified treatment of the war, American Sniper presents Chris Kyle as a man who wants to join the military for purely noble reasons: to protect America. There’s no question about whether it’s right or wrong for America to be there. It’s not as if Kyle is the one who declared war anyway; he’s a soldier, so he goes. After that, the film is about him wanting to stay in Iraq to protect his fellow soldiers. This motivation was heroic enough, but they took it one step further and created a rival sniper known as Mustafa. (Slight SPOILERS until the end of this paragraph) This inclusion provided the war segment with a beginning and an end which takes away from the more interesting conflict in the film: what happens when the war ends? In the film, it makes it appear that Kyle has accomplished everything he needed to do, but that is too simple. It would have been more powerful for him to come home with things left unfinished in Iraq. The way it is in the film makes it seem like, “Mission accomplished, let’s go home.” I’m all for keeping this film simple and pro-soldier, but it’s hard to ignore that things did not end up all that accomplished in Iraq. Historical accuracy aside, it would be a much more powerful decision if Kyle returns home and has to make peace with the fact that things aren’t complete over there. This might seem like nitpicking, but it keeps the film from being as complex and interesting as it could be. This simplicity lessened the film for me. If it was more complex, it may have ended up being my favorite film of the year instead of just making my top ten (by the way, my top ten will be out in the next couple of weeks).

One last thing about the simplification issue others have with the film. A lot of people, like Michael Moore, take issue with how the soldiers in the film refer to Iraqis as “savages” throughout the film. This issue would make sense if it was done through narration or someone that is not involved in the war. Look at any number of documentaries from the Iraq war; the soldiers involved, whether they thought they should be there or not, do not go around referring to combatants as humans. Soldiers have to do the most inhumane thing you can do: they have to kill. It wouldn’t do well for the psychology of a soldier to stop him/her and say, “Let’s cool it with the ‘savage’ talk. That’s someone’s son trying to kill you.” Even if we should not be there, we cannot expect our soldiers to worry about being politically correct. To be clear, that doesn’t mean any wartime atrocities are justified. But it does mean that a soldier in a film calling a potential enemy combatant a “savage” isn’t all that upsetting or surprising. It’s necessary. Now, if I, a common civilian, refer to a group of people I have no personal knowledge of as “savages,” feel free to call me out for it. You’ll be right to do so. But soldiers have the right to refer to their enemies however they see fit to get them through a situation the rest of us are not involved in.

Despite some relatively minor issues, American Sniper stands out as one of the year’s best. People getting worked up either for or against the film need to take a step back from it and realize it’s not trying to rewrite history or anything. It is first and foremost a film. American Sniper is engaging, entertaining, tense, incredibly acted, and emotional. Perhaps it simplifies things a bit too much here and there, but that’s what movies are for sometimes, to take the complex real world and give us a story to connect to for a little while before we have to acknowledge reality again. And for those who take issue with that, the film could not ignore the unexpected, non-movie end to Kyle’s life. In fact, that final dose of reality is just the jolt the film, and the viewers, need after it’s all said and done. It left my theater in complete and utter silence, which it should be after dealing with a film about war and its effect on people. 

 American Sniper receives a:

"Hereafter"

Hereafter - Produced and directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Peter Morgan, starring Matt Damon, Cécile de France, and Frankie and George McLaren - Rated PG-13

"It's who you are. You can't run away from that forever!" No, you can't, but you can sure as hell stay as far away from this movie as humanly possible.

What’s the afterlife like? Well, I would rather find out firsthand than sit through the pointless, boring Hereafter again. Yeah, I know, that’s quite the hyperbolic statement, but the latest film from producer/director Clint Eastwood was very disappointing. I went into the theatre expecting an interesting film about a former psychic who converses with the dead (Matt Damon) and his struggle with his “gift.” Instead I saw an overlong melodrama with a terribly plain payoff.

Hereafter is about the psychic mentioned above, but it’s also about a little English boy who wants to speak with his dead twin brother. The other third of the story concerns a French TV anchor that has a near death experience and becomes obsessed with the afterlife. The typical mystery of a film like this is the connecting factor. I can understand that the film doesn’t want to go with a standard “save the world” storyline, but the conclusion reached by screenwriter Peter Morgan just seemed pointless.

The other mystery a film about the afterlife deals with is if there is in fact an afterlife. Hereafter may have been much more interesting if the audience didn’t know if the afterlife existed in the film, but we’re shown that it does exist in the first minutes. I would find Matt Damon’s character far more interesting if it was posited that he may be a fraud paraded around by his brother (a very aged Jay Mohr). The confirmation of an afterlife has blinded many people’s reaction to the film. As usual, I used the IMDb message boards to see what was being said about the movie. I found a battle being waged between believers and atheists, with a lot of people liking or hating the movie based solely on their interpretation of an afterlife. My personal beliefs did not factor into my opinion of this film. I just accepted that a type of afterlife exists in Hereafter and that has no bearing on the existence of an afterlife in reality.

Your personal beliefs shouldn’t cloud your ability to notice terribly clichéd dialogue along the lines of “It’s not a gift, Billy, it’s a curse!” Pretty much every line spoken in this film feels like it’s been said one hundred times before and never in a compelling fashion. Not to mention the story is almost never interesting. I was never worried about any of the characters. I didn’t care about any of them at all because the writer spent too much time sowing their misery and forgot to create actual characters. The only description you can give of them is that they cry a lot and are connected by death. I know that the characters in a film about the afterlife don’t need to be lighthearted, but they can be more than shells of humans, at least.

Hereafter isn’t a dialogue rich character study, which would be nearly forgivable if the depiction of the afterlife was interesting at all. But as we see very early on, the afterlife is a vague, foggy nothingness peopled by shadowy, murmuring figures. Eastwood never truly shows us this place, either. We only get glimpses. If the filmmakers were not willing to go all the way with the premise, then they should have left it open to interpretation.

As if this bland movie wasn’t bad enough, it’s also way too long. Clocking in at over two hours, the story could have easily been told in ninety minutes. We are beat over the head time and time again with each character’s misery. The English boy can’t find any real help? The French woman is having trouble coping with near death? Matt Damon is lonely and hates his curse/gift? I could tell all of that after one scene, I didn’t need the subsequent five scenes for each character that etch these ideas in stone.

Despite all of these things, Eastwood is still a competent director. The problems with Hereafter are almost solely with the screenplay. It is all cut together coherently and I never thought that it stayed too long with any one character (actually, it just stayed too long with all of them). The sole action scene at the beginning of the film was interesting, even if some of the CG was questionable. Eastwood knows how to shoot a movie; it’s just not enough to save it.

Maybe you saw a preview for this film and you thought it was about the Matt Damon character and his ability to see into the afterlife. Well, don’t fall victim to the deceptive advertising because that is certainly not what this movie is, it’s only a terrible third of it. Being fooled by the preview isn’t the only thing wrong here, though. I didn’t hate Hereafter because I wanted it to be something it wasn’t. I hated this movie because it was pointless, contrived, and too long. Maybe I just wasn’t patient enough for this one, I don’t know, but I can’t recommend this to anyone. I suggest avoiding this one at all costs.

Random Thoughts (SPOILERS)

So what was the resolution for the little boy, really? He gets some advice from his brother (and did anyone else think that Damon's character was faking that cheesy advice at the end, just like all the impostors before him?), but he is still miserable and he has not accepted the death. His end purpose was to be a mini-stalker for Damon. He ended up being completely inconsequential to the entire plot. And how weird was it that the scene in which his brother saved him by blowing off the hat turned out to be extremely good luck through sibling rivalry? Just when it looked like there was something about the afterlife that mattered in the real world, the screenwriter decided to say, "Nope, just coincidence is all." Weak.

What was with all that Charles Dickens crap? Was it just an excuse to eventually have a Derek Jacobi cameo? It didn't make sense to me and I didn't need three (three!) scenes in which Matt Damon listens to someone read Charles Dickens. Is it not a sign of a weak film when we simply watch a man listen to another work of fiction?

Clint Eastwood needs to stop adding terrible music to his films. The score was thankfully nonexistent for most of the film, but when the French lady showed up this terribly cheesy "French" music would play and it seemed painfully out of place and it was completely distracting.

The cooking class scenes seemed to last forever. Did we really need nearly five minutes of blindfolded taste testing?

Let's recap: Hereafter contains multiple scenes of Matt Damon listening to audiobooks and celebrity readers and tastetesting food whilst wearing a blindfold. Yeah, if you saw this movie, be like me and try your best to unwatch it.

"Invictus"

Invictus - Directed by Clint Eastwood, starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon - Rated PG-13

I think "District 9" is a more interesting film about South Africa and apartheid, but "Invictus" is still very good.



Invictus, Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial effort, is a well made inspirational film with an important message, but it falls short of greatness. The story is about South Africa after apartheid and the struggle to keep the racially divided country together. Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) is the newly elected president who has been given this task. With mass poverty, an economic crisis, and open hatred between the races he decides to focus on South Africa’s rugby team. He enlists their captain, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), to motivate his team to win the rugby world cup (which is a much bigger deal in the rest of the world than it is in North America).

Invictus is not just a motivational sports movie, though. The focus is more on the political side of things. As Mandela enters the office for the first day of his presidency, most of the white office workers are packing up and leaving, assuming they are to be fired. Mandela allows them all to stay and he also makes a point to diversify his security staff (more on them later). He realizes that these small scale changes will not accomplish much and he finds his solution at an appearance at a rugby match. Mandela notices that the white fans cheer for South Africa, and the black fans cheer for England (or whoever happens to be playing South Africa), which is exactly what he did when he was imprisoned. Mandela realizes that “petty revenge” won’t solve anything, so instead of doing away with the team’s traditions, he encourages all of South Africa should embrace the team.

This sounds all well and good, but it’s a bit hard to get into a movie in which all the action takes place through a sport that is obscure at best to an American audience. I understood that the games were about more than winning, but I had almost no idea what was going on during the matches. This is actually a joke in the film as the black characters in the film are just as baffled by the game as the audience in the theater. I get the joke, but I wanted multiple, intense rugby scenes that focus on the simpler parts of the game rather than a few gags in which characters ask, “What happened? Is that good?” Eastwood does accomplish this in the final game with some great sound work and slow motion, but it was too little too late for the rugby.

Regardless of the cultural divide, the importance of the games is easy to understand. I may not have understood what was happening most of the time, but I knew how I felt when it was over. This is one of the most hopeful, uplifting movies I have seen in recent memory. In a cinematic world that seems to focus more and more on misery, death, and violence it was nice to watch a movie about human beings that overcome hate. Is that sappy? Maybe, but it’s also refreshing. But the movie does crossover into extremely sappy territory when it comes to song selection, though. Eastwood goes with an original song titled “Colorblind” that features lyrics such as, “it’s not just a game.” The music is too obvious and it’s stating things that Eastwood has already accomplished.

The musical missteps and confusing rugby scenes aside, this is a solid film. Freeman and Damon strengthen the film immensely. I don’t think they’ll be winning Oscars for their work or anything, but they do carry the film very well. Freeman is great, (as he should be, since Mandela himself has said that Freeman is the only actor who could play him) but his performance is really just a great impersonation. He does convey a presidential authority in every scene, though, and he made the film amusing at times. Damon is fine; it’s just that his character didn’t have much to do. His performance in The Informant! was much more impressive.

What makes this movie a bit more interesting, though, is the fact that the focus isn’t solely on Mandela and Pienaar. A subplot about the newly diverse security detail supplies much of the heart of the film. Add to that subplot scenes of the rugby players teaching kids about the sport, a child trying to listen to the game alongside police officers, and regular people coming together to watch the championship game and you have an encompassing picture of how important that one rugby match was to an entire country. Despite the slight missteps, Eastwood crafts an inspirational film that manages to (barely) get past an audience’s ignorance of rugby and show that a country can overcome severe differences, with the help of some born leaders and a common goal. Even if that goal involves a sport in which it is really hard to tell how goals are scored.