MovieChat Forums > Invictus (2009) Discussion > This film made rugby look boring and sof...

This film made rugby look boring and soft

posted 13 years ago by jamessharp89
9 replies | jump to latest

I enjoyed the film, but did anyone else think that the matches were filmed poorly. I'm not talking about unrealistic plays, or technical stuff, or anyhting that you'd have to be a fan to understand. To put simply, for such a brutal sport, it seemed to lack any brutality. Watching an average game of rugby you'll see more brutality than you see in this movie. WIth the amount of things they romanticised and gave the hollywood treatment to, this was one think which I felt was lacking. I saw Any Given Sunday a few months ago. That's how to film a contact sport!

I'm not talking about comparing sports in real life, even though I mentioned Any Given Sunday, so please no debating about which sport is better blah blah blah.

[–] squatdog_nz 12 years ago

The two big problems were that they cast goofy-looking dorks as the Rugby players in order to make a 5'8/170lb Matt Damon seem physically imposing and the sports coordinator for the film was an obese American woman with no prior knowledge of the sport.

This is why the ball was passed back BY HAND in the scrums and the match's climatic finale was 30 seconds of bizarre grunting and straining which made no sense within the context of the game.

[–] Trackmaster 11 years ago

But that's the point of Rugby. There are few pads and high contact, but the players are all small and skinny because they basically have to run 6-8 miles per game.

[–] matukajos 11 years ago

The South African rugby players can hardly be described as small and skinny, unless you're 2,30m and 150 kgs.

Compare footage of that rugby team and the movie and you can check that. Or just tune in to any rugby on tv or go to a match and you'll see.

The fact is that apparently they had those actors cast to make Matt Damon look big and that makes the rugby team actually look pathetic.

http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/

[–] Charlie_Runkle69 11 years ago

'But that's the point of Rugby. There are few pads and high contact, but the players are all small and skinny because they basically have to run 6-8 miles per game. '

Completely and utterly inaccurate.

[–] squatdog_nz 10 years ago

Small and skinny???

Here's footage of the ACTUAL players meeting Mandela before the 1995 World Cup (bear in mind that Mandela is 6'1):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KrQfVoHf0Y

Os Du Randt was 300lb @ 6'1, Kobus Weiss was 300lb @ 6'5 and Mark Andrews was 260lb @ 6'8.

Americans...

[–] IanDSmith 10 years ago

The rugby scenes certainly lacked any drama and the decision to laconically depict the climactic game with lots of slow shots and fades... such a deflating decision.
Honestly, I would go so far as to say "Invictus" should have been a sports movie first, a Nelson Mandela biopic second. Morgan Freeman is lovely, but Mandela is portrayed as so good and saintly, he actually is rather boring as a character. Much better if he pops in and out as a twinkly, cunning scene-stealer in a movie that's mostly about one of the best sports stories of the last 30 years.

[–] Prismark10 9 years ago

I think some of the subtlety and brutality of rugby was softened for a US audience.

Its that man again!!

[–] Demarates 9 years ago

Agreed, as important as the story is and as much as I enjoy watching Morgan Freeman, the rugby scenes were just very underwhelming.

Instead of being the climax of the film, they were very "meh". 

When I'm gone I would like something to be named after me. A psychiatric disorder, for example.

[–] 9 years ago

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