Clint Eastwood's potent new film is based on a true story about a newly elected black president struggling to unite citizens divided by racism. The name Obama never comes up — it couldn't, since the time is 1995 and the place is South Africa. The president is Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman), who was voted into office the year before, in the country's first free election. The challenge facing Mandela is to find a way to make peace with the apartheid forces that put him in jail for three decades. Mandela figures that battle should take place on, of all things, the rugby field. 
 
 Peter Travers reviews Invictus in his weekly video podcast, "At the Movies with Peter Travers" 
 
 For the blacks in South Africa, rugby was a symbol of the Afrikaners, the white forces behind apartheid. Mandela believed that if he could harness the power of the Springboks, the South African team captained by François Pienaar (Matt Damon), and host the 1995 rugby World Cup games, he could cross a racial and cultural divide. The source material for Invictus (Latin for "unconquered") is John Carlin's book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation. That's pushing it, since the factors that have separated powerful whites and resentful blacks for centuries in South Africa can hardly be reconciled by one game. But there's little doubt that the game pitting the Springboks against New Zealand's team was a major start in the healing process. 
 
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 Eastwood, shooting on location in Johannesburg and Cape Town and enlisting Chester Williams (the single black player on the Springboks) to coach Damon, wisely lets action define character. The rugby action electrifies the movie. Damon may be shorter than Pienaar's six-foot-four Afrikaner god, but he brings athletic grace to the role, and a sense of burning conscience. Freeman seems born to play Mandela, and he never delivers a false note, even when Anthony Peckham's script nudges him into sainthood. Freeman lets us see the wily politician percolating underneath Mandela's calm surface. Eastwood's modest approach to these momentous events shames the usual Hollywood showboating. In a rare achievement, he's made a film that truly is good for the soul. 

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 The healing power of sports 
 
 By Ann Hornaday 
 
 Friday, Dec. 11, 2009 
 
 If 2009 had a most valuable player award for the movies, it would have to go to Matt Damon. Whether he's appearing in "The Informant!," a Sarah Silverman Web parody or in Clint Eastwood's stirring post-apartheid drama, "Invictus," he has been consistently spot-on and almost breathtakingly self-effacing. He has become that most unlikely Hollywood rarity: a character actor with a matinee-idol face. 
 
 In "Invictus," Damon plays Francois Pienaar, the captain of the South African rugby team the Springboks, which in 1995 won the World Cup. The movie tells the story of that unlikely and politically crucial victory, which as much as anything was the result of the gentle coaxing and adamantine moral suasion of the country's new president, Nelson Mandela. 
 
 Morgan Freeman doesn't play Mandela as much as inhabit the man, in a performance that seems to embody the very transcendence that Mandela himself has come to stand for. Freeman captures with perfect pitch the inner workings of a man who, put in charge of a country still ravaged by the still-fresh violence and injustices of apartheid, sees an opportunity for healing in the rites and rituals of sport. His job is to forge within the black community a sense of identification with a mostly white team that for years has represented oppression. 
 
 Eastwood adopts a flat, uninflected style for "Invictus," wisely letting this remarkable story tell itself with a minimum of flourish or underlining. The result is a thoroughly absorbing, inspiring movie that, like last year's "Milk," features one of the year's most galvanizing performances. Freeman doesn't merely impersonate Mandela as much as personify not just political genius but an almost superhuman suppleness of character. Rugby is exciting, sure, but there's nothing more thrilling than radical forgiveness in action. 
 
 *** PG-13. 
 
 At area theaters. Contains brief strong profanity. 133 minutes.
– Clint Eastwood's Nelson Mandela tale, Invictus, wins mostly solid reviews, and everybody loves Morgan Freeman in the main role: Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: " Freeman seems born to play Mandela, and he never delivers a false note." Eastwood "shames the usual Hollywood showboating" and makes a "film that truly is good for the soul. " Peter Howell, Toronto Star: "As always, Eastwood brings solid craftsmanship to the proceedings, with direction that allows the actors to breathe while remaining alert to small details that speak of greater wisdom." Kimberly Gadette, IndieMoviesOnline: "Did someone abduct Clint Eastwood? Considering the frequent hugs and grins of the disparate countrymen, Invictus is less of a film than a salute to the renowned 1970s Coke commercial ('I'd like to teach the world to sing')." Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: "Freeman doesn't play Mandela as much as inhabit the man." Eastwood wisely gets out of the way of the story, and, as usual, Matt Damon is "spot-on and almost breathtakingly self-effacing."