A Prophet (Un Prophéte)

Invictus:

As a character of history, Nelson Mandela is relatively bulletproof. Some people have drawn attention to his less than perfect treatment of his wife, but on the whole he comes off pretty spotless. This kind of character makes for great history, it doesn’t necessarily make for great cinema.

Invictus is well-acted. Morgan Freeman is good (though surprisingly less than brilliant) in the role he was born to play. Matt Damon shows a lot of class, even occasionally outshining the heavyweight leading man. It’s well-directed, as would be expected from Clint Eastwood, even if the cinematography is a little uninspired.

The main area where the film lacks spark is the story – it’s just not Nelson Mandela’s.  The way he engineers the unification of black and white South Africa through rugby builds nicely, but halfway through it all just turns into a football movie, with occasional crosses to Nelson biting his nails. Damon’s rugby captain Francois Pienaar dominates these sections, partly because he gets more air-time, partly because he actually undergoes some kind of journey. It seems that as an ideal, and as an idol, Mandela is too sacred to be given human character flaws. The throwaway line that is the quote of this issue is the only suggestion we get of any chink in his moral armour. Instead, he’s reduced to an endless succession of rousing speeches, which lose their poignancy as they grow in number.

It’s all passable enough, but Invictus doesn’t excite and inspire as it should.

Valentine’s Day:

‘Naff’ is a word so rarely justified. Few situations require the depths of blandness and lack of inspiration conveyed by this sentiment. Valentine’s Day sets out to change this alarming negligence of language.

It’s easy to say that any film based on interweaving storylines about love is taking something from the Working Title film Love Actually. It’s much easier to make the comparison however, when the film in question steals wholesale from it. The makers of Valentine’s Day even found a bunch of reasonable actors to assist with this larceny.

Note: real emotion and comedy – come out of realism. Everything in this film operates in some kind of cliché-ridden surreality. This is a place where eighteen year old teenagers are getting ready to have sex for the first time, as opposed to their friends who are waiting to ‘make it special’. Only the pope and Tony Abbott would call that realism in today’s society.

There’s even a moment where love-sick florist Ashton Kutcher convinces a grumpy airport attendant to let him through the boarding gates without a ticket, simply by saying if he doesn’t it will ruin the life of someone who is “like sunshine”. In our post-911 world, your average airport would eclipse that shit real damn quick.

If February 14 sees has you looking for saccharine sap over substance, this might be right up your alley. If you prefer a little less formula and a little more originality – this sort of thing has been done better many, many times.