Invictus (Cert 12, 128 mins, Warner Home Video). Starring Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, Adjoa Andoh, Tony Kgoroge, Julian Lewis Jones **** Clint Eastwood’s majestic film celebrates the titanic efforts of Nelson Mandela (Freeman) and South African rugby union captain Francois Pienaar to heal the wounds of apartheid in time for the Rugby World Cup, which South Africa will host. Freeman crafts his own interpretation of the president, full of gravitas. Bone-crunching sequences on the rugby field contrast with intimate exchanges between the president, his advisers and bodyguards that reveal the deep scars in the proud, beating heart of a nation.

Crazy Heart (Cert 15, 107 mins, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertain-ment). Starring Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jack Nation **** Crazy Heart is this year’s The Wrestler, following a self-destructive has-been on the slow and painful road to redemption. Bridges’s portrayal of a drunken country singer, who vomits profusely before a concert and has to rescue his fallen spectacles from the steaming mess, doesn’t earn our sympathy with ease. Yet through an unlikely romance, we are able to glimpse the tenderness and sadness in this pitiful man and will him to complete a stint in rehab. Bridges is matched by Gyllenhaal’s emotionally raw portrayal of a lonely woman, heading for the kind of heartache that would inspire Bad to write one of his songs.

Solomon Kane (Cert 15, 99 mins, Entertainment In Video). Starring James Purefoy, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Pete Postlethwaite, Alice Krige ** A rather simplistic tale of a morally-corrupt man’s fall and equally spectacular redemption, bookmarked by swordplay set-piece. Production values are cheap and cheerful, including a computer-generated demon from the underworld in the final showdown that might very well have been transplanted straight from a videogame.