The tough guys club

Tough guys,at least those of a certain age,can be very mellow cats like Clint Eastwood,79,and Morgan Freeman,72.

Last seen together on film putting a buffed Hilary Swank through a brutal regimen in Million Dollar Baby (2004),they reunited for Invictus,a drama about a landmark South African rugby tournament directed by Eastwood and starring Freeman in a different sort of tough-guy role: Nelson Mandela,South Africas first post-apartheid president.

With Morgan Freeman,its just a pleasure to watch every scene,every nuance, Eastwood said.

Working with Clint is like every actors dream who knows anything at all about what hes doing, he said.

Invictus is their third joint outing. They first paired up on Unforgiven (1992),galloping toward bloody revenge as aging,unreconstructed outlaws with a deep-seated bond.

Twelve years later,in Million Dollar Baby,Eastwood cast Freeman as the wise,humanistic Eddie Scrap Iron Dupris against Eastwoods obsessive,pugilistic Frankie Dunn. The movie hauled off the Academy Award for best picture and Oscars for best director,lead actress (Swank) and best supporting actor (Freeman).

Ask them what makes for good film-making,and these strong,silent types will turn downright loquacious. Leadership,theyll tell you. Dependable,talented colleagues. Creative risk-taking. An eye for spotting talent and knowing a good story. Above all,perhaps,the will to hold fast to ones core convictions. Those also rank among the principal themes of Invictus (the Latin word for unconquered).

Set mainly in 1995,the screenplay by Anthony Peckham recounts a pivotal event that unfolded during the intense opening months of Mandelas presidency. The country was still struggling to master the abrupt transition from a society based on apartheid to a fledgling democracy and many people feared civil war might break out.

Sensing the potential symbolic healing value of the upcoming rugby World Cup tournament in South Africa,Mandela worked to get the countrys black majority to rally around the nearly all-white Springboks national rugby team. Although blacks largely regarded the team as an odious legacy of the former white-minority ruling class,they ended up embracing Springboks and cheering it on to a stunning upset victory in the final against New Zealands All Blacks.

To achieve his national unity ends,Nelson also had to inspire the Springboks players to stretch beyond their customary mediocrity. He did this in part by forging a friendship with team captain Francois Pienaar,played by Matt Damon. The film thus becomes,among other things,a study in leadership styles.

(Mandela) has some kind of brilliance that we dont know about, Eastwood said. And he didnt seem to let anything get in his way. He just did what he felt was right.

Freeman had met Mandela in the early 1990s and has remained in touch through the years and considers himself a friend of the man black South Africans affectionately call Madiba,a sort of grandfatherly honorific.

Hes easier to play for me than it would be to play Clint Eastwood,whom I also know and have studied really closely, Freeman said in a voice suggesting the verbal equivalent of a wink. Because he isnt anything special outside himself. Hes not on any pedestal. When I talk about him,this is one thing I remember him saying: he cant forgive himself for his failures,as a father,as a son. He responds to people,but he doesnt strut.

Invictus was shot on location in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Casting the movie wasnt difficult,Eastwood said. The hard part was finding a script that didnt sprawl all over Mandelas entire life. He finally found it in an adaptation of John Carlins book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation.

I always felt that Morgan was the ideal guy and should play Nelson Mandela, Eastwood said. Everybody thought that. It was kind of a conversation piece around the world. But nobody ever came up with it.