Movie Review: 'Changeling'

This is the part where I act like an authority on entertainment, and criticize the work of professionals who are, without exception, more successful than I in the industry in which we both work. Some people would say this is proof I have "balls", or "chutzpah" in Jewspeak. Others would say it's proof I'm a "douchebag". To catch up on any old reviews, you can find the link on the right hand side of the page, or just click here.

Clint Eastwood’s latest project, ‘Changeling’, is like a beautiful girl you want to love, but just can’t. At first, she seems perfect -– she dresses great, speaks intelligently, all your friends like her -– but upon closer inspection there’s just something missing. There’s no spark. While its acting, writing and direction are all exceedingly competent, ’Changeling’ fails to grab hold of the viewer (or at least it failed to grab this viewer).

Part of the problem stems from the true lift story of Christine Collins, a switchboard supervisor in depression-era LA. While her story is real, terrifying, and historic, it does not fit neatly into the classic three-act structure of a film. Rather than play with history and change the story to serve this structure, the filmmakers involved chose to stay true to the facts –- an admirable choice, but not probably not a dramatically sound one, as it leads to a very anticlimactic finish.

This is not necessarily a fatal flaw –- many films choose not to follow typical structure -– but the problem is exacerbated by the fact the choice doesn’t reveal itself until 90 minutes into the movie. Until then, the film plays it straight. Christine (played very well by Angelina Jolie) is introduced as a loving, hard-working single mother, devoted to her young son, Walter. Upon returning home from work one day, Walter is missing. First, the police refuse to offer any assistance, and when they do, it’s only to give her the wrong child and insist it’s hers. That is not, I repeat, not a spoiler. While the title -- not too mention the ads and trailers -- make it appear there’s some mystery about whether the boy is indeed her son, the film makes it clear from the start he is not. Instead, the actual story told by Eastwood is a straight-forward police corruption movie.

The facts of this true story are amazing and appalling -– Christine predicament and treatment is something from a nightmare – but plots involving corruption by the LAPD are a dime a dozen. The period era look and dress is fantastic, as is the cinematography, and it will likely earn Oscar nominations for several behind-the-camera-crew members, but better films (’LA Confidential’) and worse ones ('Black Dahlia') have already covered the same ground recently.

The reason for the corruption angle’s dominance over ’Changeling’ is the weakness of the missing child plotline. It is set up as the core of the film, but it doesn’t receive the same attention after the film’s midpoint. It’s the old bait and switch – Eastwood and screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski exchange the search for Walter for a protester-effects-change-in-the-system storyline. It’s not that it isn’t interesting, but one wonders why they wouldn’t advertise it as such.

Possibly because of this: While it's nice to know the real Christine Collins helped to clean up corruption in the LAPD, it's not like it really took. Really, Ms. Collins was only the first in a long line of people who've been wronged by the Los Angeles police and had that injustice brought to light -- sort of a retro Rodney King.

So, while the last hour of the film is eminently watchable -– supporting Jolie, there are solid performances by Jeffrey Donovan as antagonistic Capt. JJ Jones, and Michael Kelly as the “good cop” Det. Lester Ybarra -– it is tremendously anti-climactic. Christine and her partner in do-going, Reverend Gustav Briegleb (“the voice of god on the radio”), played by a always-solid John Malkovich, spend the final hour of the movie bringing about reform -- Briegleb is a bit like a retro Rev. Al Sharpton in his public rebukes of police brutality. But as this new focus stretched out leisurely I began to fear there wouldn't be a big emotional ending to pay off this 2 hour, 30 minute journey. There wasn’t.

It’s not that ’Changeling’ isn’t a good movie. It’s too well-crafted, too professional, to be viewed as a failure. It’s just not the kind of film I could fall in love with.

Using the age-old Hollywood scale of judgment –- HIGHLY RECOMMEND/RECOMMEND/CONSIDER/PASS (circle one) -– I rate ’Changeling’:

CONSIDER