On paper, Invictus seemed like the kind of movie I should have loved. It tells a true story. It stars Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon (who obviously knows a few good diets for quick weight loss since he was looking fit and trim again, shortly after packing on all those pounds for The Informant). There’s a healthy dose of sports involved. It was directed by Clint Eastwood. But, man, the execution was just godawful!! The film is so boring and took so long to get off the ground that I gave up on it. I watched for 38 minutes (that’s the first seven chapters according to the DVD) before finally turning it off in frustration and disgust.

What happened in that 38 minutes? Not a whole heck of a lot. Eastwood spent most of that time showing us that there was friction between blacks and whites in the early ’90s in South Africa when Mandela came to power. Yeah, no kidding. Did it really require that many scenes to show us most blacks favored Mandela and most whites didn’t? Ugh.

There were only a couple of rugby scenes in the first 38 minutes, which is another indication of how short on action the film was.

Hey, this might have turned out to be a great movie — after all, it did get a lot of good reviews — but I’ll never know because I was bored out of my skull and refused to subject myself to any more punishment.

I give this film 0 stars out of 5.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Ryan Bingham (played by George Clooney) is the kind of man who has commitment issues, which is not unheard of for a good-looking guy pushing 50. But Ryan is not your typical womanizer. Instead, his commitment issues have manifested in a different way: he basically lives life out of a suitcase and doesn’t have any real friendships or relationships.

Ryan is a “reorganization specialist”, which means he travels the country firing upwards of 30 people per day for bosses who can’t stomach such proceedings themselves. Though Ryan doesn’t particularly like the job, he does love the constant travel. In fact, his secret goal is to achieve 10,000,00 frequent flyer miles — a feat that has only been accomplished by seven other people. He’ll get all sorts of special perks once he reaches the milestone, so he doesn’t spend a single dollar unless it earns him miles in some way.

Life starts to get complicated when two women enter his sphere. The first is Alex (Vera Farmiga), who seems to live much like himself. They begin hooking up whenever they cross paths and end up in the same city. The second woman is Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), a recent Cornell grad who is assigned to follow Ryan around to learn the ropes. Natalie’s big idea for the company is to start conducting firings via video conference without so much as giving the terminated employees a little handbook with Velo binding explaining their severance package and health insurance continuation options. But thi will save on travel expenses, which is appealing to the higher-ups, so initially Natalie and Ryan are at odds. But once they get to know each other, a mutual respect develops.

As the film progresses, we see Ryan’s priorities gradually change. He begins to think that perhaps he has wasted his life chasing 10,000,000 miles when he should have been establishing meaningful relationships with people. He thinks Alex could be the one, so on a whim, he turns up at her door in Chicago — only to get a nasty surprise.

Thus, just when the viewer thinks Ryan might have changed his mind about the way he lives his life, he goes right back on the road and relishes being rootless once again.

Liked:

• On paper, this story doesn’t sound all that interesting, but it worked very well on the screen. I think it’s because the acting was absolutely superb. All three main actors (Clooney, Farmiga, Kendrick) were nominated for Oscars, and deservedly so. They were excellent — and this is coming from someone who doesn’t ordinarily pay attention to acting. But these actors managed to make me care deeply about what the characters were going through, and that was quite a feat.
• I liked seeing the perks that high-end travelers get. I just wish we had gotten more of a glimpse of what a 10,000,000 club member would receive (besides a glass of champagne and a visit from the copilot).
• I loved when the three of them crashed the tech conference and got drunk. That was a fun, amazing scene that really served to flesh out the characters.
• The Amelie reference made me smile, as did that whole cheesy shtick about photographing the married couple in random places.
• The scenes where Ryan and Natalie had to fire people were suitably uncomfortable and awkward. Wow. That is definitely the worst part of the job for anyone in a managerial position.

Disliked:

• The wedding stuff went on a bit too long for my tastes. That was the only blemish in an otherwise excellent film.

Rating:

I’m very surprised by how much I enjoyed Up in the Air. It’s easy for character studies to go astray, but director Jason Reitman did a wonderful job of keeping everything on track. This film could have been a disaster with the wrong actors or wrong director. Fortunately, everyone involved was top-notch. Up in the Air deserved every major award nomination it received, and probably should have won a few Oscars. I give it 5 stars out of 5.