Movie Review: Changeling

Changeling (2008) 

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Written by J. Michael Straczynski 

Starring Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Michael Kelly, Jeffrey Donovan 

Release Date October 24th, 2008

Published October 23rd, 2008 

The title Changeling evokes images of little green aliens. I think director Clint Eastwood is going for alienation but the connection is missed until you actually see the movie. Despite the title Changeling, is really an affecting, thrilling drama featuring a performance by Angelina Jolie that is arguably an early lock for Oscar gold.

Christine Collins never usually worked on Saturdays but with a girl calling in sick and her replacement MIA, she would have to work this Saturday. It was to be the day she took her son Walter to see the new Charlie Chaplin movie. Instead, Christine had to leave her 9 year old little boy home alone. After missing her trolley and having to walk home, she arrived to find her son missing.

The police refused to take a report in the first 24 hours, assuming the kid would turn up. Walter would be missing for 5 months until a break in the case. A little boy found abandoned on DeKalb Illinois claims to be Walter. However, when mother and child are reunited Christine knows the boy is not her son. Bullied into posing for pictures and taking the child home by a PR obsessed detective (Jeffrey Donovan), Christine refuses to admit the child is hers.

Based on the true story of Christine Collins who in 1928 was the victim of a Los Angeles Police Department so desperate for good press coverage that they bullied and cajoled her into taking home a child that was not hers and went out of their way to convince her he was even as all evidence said no. Eventually, the cops tossed Collins in a sanitarium where she met other women who crossed the LAPD.

It's an exceptionally compelling story and in the hands of a master like Eastwood the plot is transcendent. There are several moments in Changeling that will absolutely take your breath away. Most movies can barely manage one breathtaking, edge of your seat moment, Eastwood has at least three. One is glimpsed in the trailer and nearly pulls an out of context tear.

Another is a perfectly thrown punch and still another is a classic courtroom scene that acts as a collective catharsis for nearly 2 solid hours of breath holding tension. There is no gotcha moment, no simple twists, no hand of god, just great actors with great material and a director who orchestrates it all to near perfection.

I cannot say enough about Angelina Jolie's transformative performance. Jolie takes everything audiences have known about her and turns them on it's ear. Aside from those legendary lips, in bright red here, Jolie plays totally against type as a meek, mousy single mom. Yes, she grows into a character we recognize as Angelina Jolie but early on as she effects the voice of a woman for whom speech is a desperate effort, you can't help but be blown away that you are watching the star of Wanted and Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Even her characters in A Mighty Heart and her Oscar winning turn in Girl Interrupted do not compare to the highly original work Jolie delivers in Changeling.

The title sounds very Invasion of the Body Snatchers but the movie is truly a moving, often breathtaking drama. Far from one of Eastwood's masterpieces but still a work that shames most other directors. Changeling meanders from time to time and fudges some character motivations but with three scenes of truly devastating emotional power and an overall hypnotic air, there is far more to recommend Changeling than to nitpick.