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Changeling - In 1928, Single mother Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) returns home one day to discover her nine-year-old son, Walter, is missing. She calls the police and, after enduring a grueling 24 hours, they search for her son. But the boy they return to her is not her son. After confronting corrupt city authorities, Collins is vilified as an unfit mother and sent to an asylum.

This is a grueling film to watch. I have not felt this hideous since North Country, a film which also dealt with misogyny within the power structure. Women are treated as fragile, emotional, and not believable. This film tackles corruption to boot, as the LAPD is accused of being a gang of thugs that answer to no one. Eastwood is old school with the violence, understanding that the mind can fill in the very brutal gaps.

Angelina Jolie delivers another great performance. But unlike A Mighty Heart, this film actually deserves her presence. I don't think she really should have so much press coverage, but there is definitely reason for her acclaim as an actress. The situation her character goes through is so surreal and the film captures it perfectly. It gives you chills from the second Christine is given this pretender to raise and rarely lets up. And if for one moment you tell yourself "It's just a movie" as I tried to, this s*** actually happened. Characters were composited or changed, a disclaimer at the end states, but the events were the same.

An odd praise goes out to Jason Butler Harner, who plays Gordon Northcott, a kidnapper and murderer of many children. He has played one of the monsters of everyone's nightmares to perfection. Also of note is Jeffrey Donovan for his portrayal of J. J. Jones, corruption personified. Jones is a man able to whisk people away to asylums with no need of warrants. Scary indeed.

Changeling shares a theme with several of Clint Eastwood's other films. Unforgiven and Flags of Our Fathers come most readily to mind. His lesson concerns truth and lies, and exposing the hypocrisy of falsehoods for want of the truth. The truth is rarely pretty, but generally preferable to lies, and will often come to surface, if given enough time. I doubt I will watch this struggle for truth for a long time to come (it's not one for casual viewing), but it's a very good film.

A-

Christine Collins: "The boy they brought back is not my son."

ClintEastwood s knows a good story, and he knows how to tell it on film. Not everything he does is as powerful as his depiction of a dynamic female boxer in Million Dollar Baby, for which Hilary Swank won a best actress Oscar among four for the film. In Changeling he presents another strong woman, Christine Collins, played by the notable Angelina Jolie. Because she is directed to weep at almost every turn and regularly underplay her grit, Jolie won't win accolades, nor will Eastwood rack up the nominations as he frequently does in Oscar season. But his adaptation of the historic Wineville Chicken Murders chills with his perceptions about the capriciousness of crime and the determination of those who choose to fight it.

In a Prohibition-era 1928, Collins gets word that the Los Angeles Police Department is returning her kidnapped eight-year old son. When she sees him at the station, a finely directed sequence showing the forces of motherhood and politics clash, she knows it is not her child. LAPD, needing the good publicity, forces her to take the boy overnight with the logic that she is merely in shock. The rest of this overly long thriller carefully traces the discoveries leading to resolutions and disappointments. Along the way, police corruption is exposed, mental institution incarceration of women is laid bare, and grisly serial murdering is slowly detailed.

Yet in this discursive narrative, Eastwood indulges himself beyond Jolie's annoying crying by gratuitously laboring over the details of an execution. The stark San Quentin setting is ghastly and the villain worthy except for the film's obvious criticism of false mental institution lockup, ironic here because this murderer is clearly deranged enough to be determined unfit for trial.

As in every Eastwood production, the values are first-rate, in this case period costuming and vehicles (those Model T's and trolley cars are beautiful). As in Mystic River, Eastwood knows how to splice family and community together in the struggle against organized crime, from street violence to public service malpractice. The activist preacher Reverend Briegleb (John Malkovich) helps bring the worlds together in his radio broadcasts, Malkovich for once playing good well. Eastwood continues to be the director of choice for depicting crimes and heartaches that strike the common citizen at will.

We all should be as productive in our later years. May he extend well beyond his golf-playing days and into our future.

Very intriguing story, but Jolie's performance is what makes it worth.

Although I loved Clint Eastwood very much as an actor, I have to admit that I appreciate him even more as a director because this man does not use the standard Hollywood tricks. He just knows to tell a good story, using only good a script and great acting. "Changeling" is the story woman's battle with the police and the system, and an indeed fascinating tribute to commitment of a person to break the corruption, cover-up and the excavation to find her child that she got taken from her. The film has few explicit scenes and an atmosphere that is really tough to follow. There is really a lot going on in this emotionally difficult and fantastically filmed movie, definitely worth your time and attention. A masterpiece.

Clint Eastwood is one of the legends of the silver screen, from his humble beginnings as the Man With No Name in Sergio Leone westerns to Dirty Harry the kick-butt cop. As a director, he has given us some of the finest stories we could ever see, including the Oscar-winning Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, and the war epic twins Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. With his new film, he explores the dark side of the earlier part of the twentieth century in Tinseltown (Los Angeles). Taken from true events, the story unfolds that a single mother Christine Collins has lost her nine-year old son, Walter. She asks the LAPD to intervene, and about two months later, her son is returned. Then, she says it isn't her son. She never looks back.

From the moment the young boy steps off the train, Christine insists to everyone that he is not her son. Unfortunately, the police say she is delusional and just upset. The films leads to the truth of the matter, which is that the corruption in the department has led to them being lackadaisical in their duties. The story moves along fluidly, yet we are never really told the reason that corruption resides.

Nevertheless, the film is quite an experience. It looks terrific and really feels like the 1920s in Los Angeles. Angelina Jolie is solid as Christine, yet I felt she seemed more whiny at times than desperate. It just didn't move me as strongly as Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby. The supporting cast is good as well, especially John Malkovich as the pastor eager to help Christine in the fight against the LAPD. What I really wanted was that emotional pull that Eastwood's other films had. This one seemed a bit cold and ruthless, despite that being its subject material. So, I would say to go and see it; it is definitely worth the 140 minutes. As for Oscar time, I can't say for sure that it will wrap up the big ones such as Best Picture, Director or Actress. It wasn't the strongest campaign I've seen, but then again this has been a weaker year than 2007.