Last evening I decided to rent the latest Clint Eastwood film (directed and produced, not acted) Invictus starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, and I thought that it was fantastic. I enjoyed the film a great deal, and I thought that Freeman's portrayal of Nelson Mandela has to rank among his best work. Shawshank Redemption was his mountain top, but I found this role to be very moving. It isn’t easy to write a compelling screenplay to a true story with a known ending, but they pulled it off.
I will say this, I played a lot of football in high school. I have never played rugby. For all the high speed collisions and physical violence in football, those rugby guys are hardcore. I wore a helmet and shoulder pads, they don't. I remember playing intramural contact hockey at University, and a guy from the varsity rugby team played on our squad. He played contact hockey without shoulder pads, but his shoulders were so big that the refs couldn't tell that he was violating intramural equipment rules. That guy was a wrecking ball on the ice, crashing into people at high speeds with no shoulder pads without so much as a scratch.
Of course I never told him that he had to put on shoulder pads (despite school regulations), because I knew if you put body armour on that guy and turned him loose, we would need paramedics on standby.
Cosign!
ReplyDeleteI love, love, loved it! What a great story.
What made it so much fun for me is that while in NZ 2 years ago we saw the "All Black" and they are exactly as depicted in this film, it's so much fun!
A real man's sport to say the least, OUCH!
I hear it is hard to understand the dialogue because of the accent that is imitated.
ReplyDeletePete Merrifield, a Conservative candidate, in Richmond Hill a few years ago used to regale us with Rugby anecdotes. He liked to twist his entire nose upside down to show the effects. I gather that for family and other reasons he is enjoying an hiatus from politics but I, for one, would like to see him run again. He had and has my support for a lot of reasons.
ReplyDeleteAnony@ 7:19pm
ReplyDeleteWE watched it with 3 kids under 11 and they didn't move or ask a question. However they understood the story somewhat before we started but had no problem with the language or dialect.
It IS their new favorite movie and after the movie, we explained Apartheid/Mandela etc further, they REALLY got it.
It was an exceptional story but then I'm a huge sports fan so perhaps that helps too.
Btw, Peter Mckay is also a Rugby player, I've heard.
The South African accent is one of the most difficult to do. DiCaprio did a great one in Blood Diamonds.
ReplyDeleteFreeman was much better than Damon.
I played rugby for a number of years and had the priviledge of attending a training clinic put on by the NZ Maori team (essentially the All Blacks farm team). I had a reputation for being tough (for a back), but these guys took me to school.
ReplyDeleteThe scariest thing was that most of them were not even that big. One guy was almost exactly built the same way I was - 5'9", 190lbs, but he hit harder than I've ever been hit before and he seemed virtually impervious to tackles, even from our biggest guys.
When asked about American Football, they universally said "It's kind of an interesting game, but what are all the pads for?"