I saw this true tale of rugby heroics at a film festival which also screened The Blind Side, another real-life story which pivoted around the Yanks' obsession with American football.

Not for the first time on film did I gaze at the football action in utter bewilderment. As far as I can fathom, American football hardly even qualifies as a sport, with our hero in this film – a gentle giant –regarded with awe when he's nothing more than a battering ram. At no point does he even hold the ball, never mind run with it!

It's ironic, therefore, that an American director has brought rugby union to our cinema screens. Hopefully, Clint Eastwood's movie will show the Americans how a far superior rough and tumble game involving an oval ball doesn't need helmets and pads and, more vitally, flows with finesse and pulses with drama.

Speaking as a Welshman (ok, so I'm biased), it would be wonderful if Invictus could catalyse rugby union in the States.

For those of us living in the lands of the Six Nations, Invictus is also welcome: up till now, rugby union action on film has been limited to cameo skirmishes between callow boys on grammar school fields.

In Invictus, it's the heart of the movie and the very thing that unites a divided nation.

However, this is more than a mere triumph-over-adversity sports pic: it's the fairly stirring story of one of history's most compelling statesmen, Nelson Mandela, grappling with the grim problem of a long-time Afrikaner state having only just freed up its shackling apartheid.

"It's a critical point in his presidency. What better way to unite black and white, decides Mandela, than the Springboks winning the Rugby World Cup at a time when it's also the host country?

Of course, Mandela's achievements in power were wider and more complex, but hey: this is a movie entertainment.

If you want the full story, curl up with his autobiography A Long Walk to Freedom but I would recommend a view of this short walk to reconciliation and triumph.

The simple story of how Mandela reaches out to Springbok captain Francois Pienaar for help in winning the World Cup is fairly revealing, quite absorbing and, eventually, rousing. It also plays onside the notion that sport and politics do mix.

Much has already been made of Morgan Freeman's Oscar-nominated turn as Nelson Mandela (a friend of Freeman who always thought he should portray him in a film) and there is no question that his absorption – rather than aping - of Mandela is crucial to the movie's credibility and success.

Freeman especially captures both Mandela's geniality and gravitas as well as that lopping gait and mischievous glint in the eye.

However, it's pleasing that Oscar has also noted Matt Damon's portrayal of Pienaar (in the Best Supporting Actor category) as a tough, tenacious but also tender man who is clearly affected by his contact with the President, especially after visiting the tiny cell which confined Mandela for 27 years.

This is a good point to mention that Invictus is the title of a poem that sustained Mandela in jail and was passed on to Pienaar by Mandela –appropriate given that the last line reads 'I am the captain of my soul'.

Rugby aficionados may regard Damon himself as tiny in comparison to the hulk that was the real Francois Pienaar. Indeed, it concerned Damon enough to question his director. 'You know, this guy is huge', the actor pointed out (5ft 9 as opposed to Pienaar's 6ft 3), to which Eastwood replied: 'Hell, you worry about everything else. Let me worry about that'.

As it turned out, Damon worked out and beefed out, and Eastwood has somehow set up scenes and camera angles so that the Pienaar on screen looks muscly and, if not tall, at least not small.

Damon looks every inch a rugby player, too, and Eastwood has worked hard on depicting the bruising bustle of rugby action as well as replicating the tension, atmosphere and drama of the World Cup Final, even if most of the players were chosen more for their rugby skills than any thespian prowess. Also, Eastwood lingers a touch too long on the field of play.

At nearly 80 years of age, Clint Eastwood is still making solid, dependable films, opting to keep scenes understated and relying on old-fashioned clarity.

It's not all about rugby: for instance, Eastwood distils the evident enmity between black and white with a telling sub-plot showing how the tensions between Mandela's ANC activist bodyguards and those from the F W de Klerk government (who Mandela controversially hired as soon as he came into office) gradually ease as the film progresses.

Even more telling is the memory I will take away of a man who could have practiced revenge politics when elected but instead showed humanity and nobility and an extraordinary capacity for forgiveness.

There have been, and will be, deeper and darker films about South Africa, and surely someone more ambitious than Clint Eastwood will make a major biopic of Nelson Mandela one day but, for the moment, this snapshot of his life makes for interesting and, for some, insightful viewing.