At 78, Clint Eastwood still knows how to tell an engrossing tale. After helming several standard cop flicks throughout the late '90s (most notably "Absolute Power"), he rose to sudden prominence as a director with serious chops with the Oscar-nominated "Mystic River" and Oscar-winner, "Unforgiven."
Much of his filmography takes a somber look at crime, corruption and the law. The former "Dirty Harry" icon continues to find stories that emerge out of prototypically male environments - police stations, battlefields, boxing rings. Female characters, particularly Maggie Fitzgerald of Million Dollar Baby, must learn how to live inside these masculine constructs. As a mother battling a rigid police system, Angelina Jolie plays such a role in Eastwood's newest feature Changeling.
Based on a true story, the movie opens on a quiet street in 1928 Los Angeles. Christine Collins (Jolie) starts the day as usual, dropping off her son, Walter, at school, before heading to her job as a switchboard supervisor. These early scenes of Collins' lovingly doting on her boy are interesting to watch when juxtaposed against the media's recent attention to Jolie's parenting practices.
Yet normalcy in Changeling quickly dissolves into chaos as Walter suddenly goes missing. The Los Angeles Police Department, hungry for some good press given their citywide reputation as a corrupt force, rounds up the boy in a few weeks. Collins takes one look at the child and says, "He's not my son."
The story at this point begins to resemble a Kafkaesque nightmare as police captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) forces Collins to take the boy home despite her protestations. She in turn persistently confronts Jones, doctors and other "experts," who all dismiss her as hysterical. The conflict escalates into a surreal test of wills, one between objective, dispassionate (read: male) science and motherly emotion and intuition. In one scene a no-nonsense female character ironically reflects on the sexist culture against which Collins bravely fights: "Everybody knows women are fragile."
Yet Changeling is more than a feminist tract. Unconcerned with equal rights, Collins only wants her son returned and for the LAPD to admit its mistake. People eventually come to her call for justice, including Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), a Presbyterian preacher who decries police corruption in his weekly radio broadcasts. But the force has more powerful weapons at its disposal: muscle and coercion. Jones ruthlessly sends Collins off to the psychopathic ward, where she finds Carol (Amy Ryan) and others locked away for similar attempts to take on the system.
Jolie, as the sole focus of nearly every sequence in Changeling, does solid work in carrying viewers through the film's two-hour-plus length. Through those big, childlike eyes of hers (usually brimming with tears or on the verge), she transmits all the confusion and anguish Collins endures while on her quest for truth.
Malkovich, a volatile character actor in the tradition of Pacino, commands every scene in which he appears. His Briegleb, a serene, sweater-wearing pillar of decency, can still fly into enraged diatribes against Collins' oppressors when necessary. Rounding out the cast, Donovan's chiseled features and simmering Irish accent make him a frightening antagonist.
The script for Changeling (from "Murder, She Wrote" writer J. Michael Straczynski) suffers some for its inclusion of several lengthy flashbacks and other unnecessary scenes. Ever the lawman, Eastwood is determined to carry justice out to its bitter (and ultimately unsatisfying) end, even when that means losing viewers' interest in the process. Nonetheless, the movie regains strength with its David & Goliath themes and their disturbing yet hopeful implications for today's citizens.
[[In-content Ad]]
