Rugby: Spoiler alert - the Springboks win

Matt Damon (right) replicates the moment Francois Pienaar hoisted the William Web Ellis trophy in 1995. Photos / Supplied, Getty Images

Morgan Freeman was just fine and dandy as the great freedom fighter. I know that now because whenever I think about Nelson Mandela it is Freeman's visage that has seared itself on the mind's retina.

He also happens to be the biggest problem with Invictus. Not the only problem, not by a long shot, but still a big problem.

By making this a movie about "Madiba" and, even more tenuously, about the birth of the Rainbow Nation, the movie completely fails to answer the core question: How did a team that had been performing so poorly, that was given little chance of winning, turn itself around and carve out one of the most improbable and exhilarating of victories?

Invictus tries so desperately not to be a "sports movie" that it ends up forgetting that it is a great sports story and by doing so the film unintentionally belittles the Springboks' stupendous achievement.

It stretches credibility to breaking point to suggest that Mandela's interest was the catalyst for the Boks' sudden and irresistible upsurge in form. In fact, the amount of input he had in the campaign has been disputed (like most films, history has been re-written significantly to enhance the dramatic narrative), though there is no question he forged a bond with Francois Pienaar.

So that would leave only the return from injury of overweight (in the film at least) winger Chester Williams, and a few chest-puffing exhortations from Pienaar as plausible reasons for the turnaround. Implausible reasons include the initially reluctant Boks taking a training session in a black township and learning the words to Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika.

Williams' character is hopelessly underdeveloped and while we are told that South Africa have changed their coach, Ian McIntosh was sacked in 1994, we know nothing about the role Kitch Christie played. That's a shame; his is a fascinating story but not one that gets even passing mention here.

There is no overwhelming sense of drama in the semifinal against France, although it did rain heavily, which in terms of excitement was every bit as loaded as the final. As it is, the final (no mention of Suzie the waitress here) is a nice sidebar to the real action which is happening outside Ellis Park as a small black boy inches closer to a seat in a police car to listen to the match being broadcast on radio.

You see, it was the Boks' campaign that finally brought blacks, whites and coloureds together. We knew this was going to happen from minute one because we had the none-too-subtle image of a team of all-white rugby players practising at a posh school while on the other side of the road black kids kicked a soccer ball around on a scruffy wasteland. Guess what, at the film's conclusion the symbolic race barrier had been brought down and Boks of all classes and creeds danced together (spoiler alert: the Springboks win).

There are at least 10 scenes in this movie that needed re-shooting because the action is either so sloppy or the acting by the significant cast of extras is so wretched. The scene where a burly Afrikaner screws up the song sheet of the new South African anthem is so gruesome - "I'm not singing this terrrrorrrist song!" - and so obvious that it requires a trip to the DVD shop to hire Unforgiven just to remind yourself that Eastwood can be great.

Matt Damon is actually okay, though it did look like he played better rugby in The Departed than he did here.

Perhaps because the story is so close to us as New Zealanders it was hard to digest, so at times it is necessary to transport yourself and wonder what it would be like watching this in a movie theatre in Dallas or Montreal or any other place where rugby was barely a blip on the sporting consciousness. Would it be a great feel-good sports movie?

I doubt it. The Miracle of Berne (2003), with a cast of nobodies, did it so much better.