Invictus (12A) 133 mins **
Tony (18) 76 mins ***
Approaching the age of 80, Clint Eastwood shows no signs of slowing down, even as his films grind to a sclerotic halt. Last year’s Gran Torino overcame its limited grasp of inner-city gang culture - chiefly through the undiminished force of Eastwood’s own on-screen star persona - but other recent directorial efforts have proved stodgier. Despite its Oscar triumph, 2005’s Million Dollar Baby was crudely hewn and outrageously judgemental melodrama, while 2008’s Changeling became much less intriguing as period mystery when it began tying its loose ends into a hangman’s knot.
Increasingly, it seems, Eastwood has been drawn to projects that are logistically challenging - requiring all his considerable behind-the-camera craftsmanship - but morally and dramatically simplistic, the kind of pious fare for which filmmakers like Stanley Kramer were lauded during his apprenticeship in the industry. His latest Invictus - depicting the formation of South Africa’s “Rainbow Nation” under the newly elected President Mandela - fits the pattern to a tee: it’s easy, all right. Too easy: even the title, derived from a William Ernest Henley poem, sounds like a syrup designed to soothe the ticklish throat.
The nominal theme here is leadership. Anthony Peckham’s screenplay provides, on one hand, a talky backroom drama in which Mandela (Morgan Freeman - who else?) thrashes out the details of the new republic, healing the schisms between the country’s black and white factions while battling his own physical and mental exhaustion. On the other, we get a conventional sports drama in which the Springbok rugby captain Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon) rallies his beleaguered troops in preparation for the 1995 World Cup, held on South African soil with the intention of showcasing Mandela’s more enlightened regime. These two arcs sporadically coincide, as when the team’s bus is observed passing through the townships. “I wouldn’t want to live here,” mutters one of Pienaar’s predominantly white squad, which is about as contentious as Invictus gets.
At every other step, the director is keen to reassure us that everything turned out for the best. Freeman’s Mandela is omniscient, twinkly and wise: rather like his portrayal of God in Bruce Almighty, only with a fluctuating Xhosan accent. There’s never any sense the actor is being challenged to fill Mandela’s imposing, weather-beaten shoes: it’s a performance fashioned from the most comforting carpet slipper, requiring only the Morgan Freeman Voiceover Device from Mike Myers’ The Love Guru to complete its lulling effect. Damon, for his part, summons a creditable sincerity, but this Pienaar - wide of jaw, broad of shoulder, not unduly interesting - is merely a tool in some schematic scripting, asked to look thoughtful while his bigoted father rants at “the blecks” on the television.
It’s not long before the inspirational speeches start coming, running out sentiments that will sound fresh to no-one save, perhaps, an actor-director once known for some fairly reactionary opinions. Still, you’d rather endure these than the atrocious score - by Clint’s son Kyle - with its plaintive, plinky-plonk piano and endless dreary songs about “rising up”. Invictus was evidently compiled with the best of intentions, but the result is one-sided and predictable within minutes of the film kicking off: a walkover for the L.A. Liberals, with not nearly enough narrative rucking to stir the soul.
Fresh blood this week comes care of Tony, a funny-creepy British B feature from writer-director Gerard Johnson, tailing the eponymous psychopath (an eerily good Peter Ferdinando) around the streets of Dalston. Johnson’s interest lies not in gory exploitation, but observing his protagonist’s hopeless attempts at social interaction: unfailingly polite, Tony greets his victims-to-be with fish fingers, glasses of squash, and Paul Young’s “No Parlez” album on cassette. Produced by Shameless’s Paul Abbott - with whom Johnson shares a sharp eye for life’s shabbier details - this small yet impressively formed debut manages at least one deadpan masterstroke: when the authorities finally show up at Tony’s grim digs, it’s in the wholly mundane form of the TV licensing officer.
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