Among the multitude of popular film genres, the sports movie may actually surpass the familiar marshmallow melodramas for sheer weepiness. In the safety of darkened theaters, hard-bitten fans of football, basketball, baseball, even boxing frequently dissolve into tears in response to the familiar tales of tragedy and triumph. Whether fictional or factual, many sports films trade in inspiration, employing such subjects as the underdog defeating the favorite, the comeback from a devastating injury, the victory at the last moment, and other uplifting stories. The long list of such works includes films as different as "Hoosiers," "Seabiscuit," "Cinderella Man," "The Rookie," and of course the two most famous baseball films of them all, "The Natural" and "Field of Dreams."

When a sports film addresses its particular subject within a significant social, political, or historical moment, it demonstrates how that sport expresses something of its culture and its nation. "Chariots of Fire," for example, shows within the story of the 1924 Olympic Games an insightful vision of British class structure and snobbery, becoming something like a movie of manners. The new movie about rugby (and something more), "Invictus," chronicles a remarkable event in the history of South Africa, and the career of Nelson Mandela.

The picture tells the usual heartwarming story of the unlikely triumph of the South African rugby team, the Springboks, in the World Cup matches of 1995. That victory resulted in part from the resolve of the newly elected president of the newly democratic nation to find a way to bring the hated white minority and the previously suppressed black majority together. Mandela rallies the country around the rugby team, previously the symbol of white oppression to black South Africans, uniting the two groups for one brief shining moment in joy over their nation's unlikely victory.

Although the film shows Mandela (Morgan Freeman) signing papers, attending meetings, negotiating agreements, traveling to foreign countries, etc., it concentrates on his efforts to make rugby something like the national sport. He meets with the captain of the Springboks, François Pienaar (Matt Damon), whose family, like most whites, fears the new government, to encourage him to lift his underdog team to new heights and instructs them to travel around the country conducting clinics for black children in the squalid shantytowns. His commitment and Pienaar's cooperation and leadership result in an astonishing victory over New Zealand for the world championship.

The sequences of the various matches tend to blend together into one confused scramble for a football, with repeated shots of muscular young men running around a field and beating the hell out of each other - in this rugged sport every play looks like a foul and apparently just about anything goes; what fun. The most compelling moment of the championship contest, surprisingly, occurs at the beginning, when the New Zealanders attempt to intimidate their opponents with a terrific Maori war chant. Although those unfamiliar with the sport and that game realize the outcome, like the hockey movie "Miracle," even with that knowledge "Invictus" maintains an appropriate level of suspense and achieves a most emotional climax.

Though somewhat stolid and taciturn, the short, sturdy Matt Damon looks as if he belongs on the field with his larger teammates and speaks with an entirely credible accent; apparently an exceptional individual as well as an outstanding athlete, Pienaar himself, from a family of racist Afrikaners, must deserve some of the credit for contributing to the momentary uniting of a tragically divided people.

Morgan Freeman's performance as Nelson Mandela generates the real vitality of the picture, however, a stunning interpretation of a living icon of courage and endurance - he spent 27 years in prison - a secular saint of peace, a priest of forgiveness and reconciliation. He speaks with a peculiar precision, carries himself with great dignity, and possesses a powerful presence; he also seems a man of immeasurable charm, treating everyone he meets as a worthy individual, appealing always to the best in each of them. His acting transforms the typically maudlin into the triumphant, the history of a struggle and the conduct of a game into a moment of transcendence, lifting a troubled nation with a bloody past into something like glory.