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Clint Eastwood’s Invictus is just about what you would except from an inspirational sports story. But, as a film involving Nelson Mandela and the unification/healing of South Africa, it falls unfortunately short.

Eastwood is a ‘classical’ director in most every respect, and sometimes those instincts result in a film of unique power like Letters from Iwo Jima. Other times, they bring about accomplished but stilted ones like The Changeling or Flags of Our Fathers. For Invictus, the award-winning director peers into the South African situation and Mandela’s time as president and hones in on a particular event; the president’s 1995 support of the nation’s rugby team in the World Cup.

The Springboks, whose mascot had direct ties to the apartheid regime, would go on to defeat the New Zealand All Blacks that year in a victory that was given special significance by Mandela, who had hopes it would help unify the wounded and splintered aspects of his country. Invictus, based on John Carlin’s book, captures all of this and sometimes it achieves moments of resonance, but in the end it’s just one more by-the-numbers drama where the underdog wins and sports bring everyone together. It could have been a lot more.

Invictus is not a bad movie. The acting is terrific all around, especially Freeman, who has been on tap to play Mandela for years. Although I would have preferred a film that ultimately placed him more front and center, Freeman brings a curious and specific energy to this man and what emerges is a portrait of a gifted, charismatic leader who knew all too personally well the anguish and separation present in his country. Amazingly, the same picture Carlin paints in Playing the Enemy is shown here without overly sentimentalizing Mandela or propping him up as a saint, or worse yet, an empty parallel to Obama. Freeman doesn’t overstate his scenes and Eastwood gives him space to flesh Mandela out as both a leader and a family man. These two have worked together before, and they have a good understanding of and respect for one another’s gifts. Freeman’s contribution is the film’s finest, and what ultimately pushes it into the recommended category for me.

Damon is just fine as Francois Pienaar, the coach of the Springboks, even if his accent is a little dodgy. The relationship that grows between he and Mandela is the film’s life force; the audience watches as both men attempt to overcome the undercurrents of racial hate and distrust that exist in this new integrated South Africa. Pienaar is a morally decent man, but the script refuses to make him interesting beyond or because of it. The real Pienaar did what he does in this film, but the movie reduces him to an easy, one-dimensional character.

It’s a shame too. The only time Eastwood seems to know how to handle the race issues is in the Mandela/Pienaar partnership. The rest of the time–including a subplot involving a young boy who learns to cheer for the ‘evil’ Springboks–he swings for the melodramatic fences and the movie becomes more cloying as a result.

In the end though, Eastwood remains a very talented and canny director. He wants to tell a story about Mandela, about dealing with a country in the ashes of apartheid, and he’s chosen a story where something seemingly inconsequential–a rugby game–bec0mes an instrument of healing. And his cinematic instincts do not fail him in delivering that story. It hits all the notes it sets out to hit. But, here is the first on-screen depiction of what became reconciliation within a country rife with division and mistrust. And instead of grasping that, we are just thinking “I’m sure glad Damon’s team beat those pesky Kiwis.’

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