Another outstanding work from Eastwood

Rating: Null/10 (7 December 2008)

We've long known that Angelina Jolie was more than a (very) pretty face - after all, besides Lara Croft and Mrs Smith, she has given us the Academy Award-award winning performance in "Girl, Interrupted" as well as the more recent "A Mighty Heart". And we've known for many decades that 78 year old Clint Eastwood is an exceptional producer and directer who continues to build up an amazing canon of work including recent and immensely sensitive films such as "Mystic River" and "Million Dollar Baby". Working together for the first time here, Jolie and Eastwood have created an outstanding work that sears into the soul.
'Changeling' is not a word I've come across before this movie, but its definition - a child exchanged for another - tells you all to need to know before seeing the film. It is based on a true story: the disappearance in 1928 of nine-year old Walter Collins in a Los Angeles badly served by a deeply incompetent and corrupt police force.
This abduction became one part of the wider case of the infamous Wineville Chicken Coop Murders and, if the details of the case depicted so graphically in the film were not a matter of public record, one would never believe them. The recreation of the period is brilliantly done and the cast of actors is uniformly excellent, including John Malkovich playing (for once) a force for rationality and justice. Real credit should go too to screenwriter and former journalist J Michael Straczynski for telling an horrific story in a compelling and measured manner.