Cheap and Manipulative

Rating: 4/10 (31 July 2016)

Let's see if I got this down correctly, it's Los Angeles in 1928, a young boy raised in a single working mother household disappears while he's left at home unattended. Months later, the police desperate to keep their decaying reputation intact because their so corrupt, lazily claims that they found her child. When she confronts them and tells them that's not her child, the lazy asses say she's making thing up. When she refuses to dismiss the case, the cops end up locking her away in an asylum. While this is happening, some graphic details involving another child abduction case catches their attention feeling that the misfired details to the story is more macabre than the one's been uncovered.
Why would anyone want to see this exhibition of manipulative cheapness? All it delivers here is just showcasing children's lives being threatened. In a nutshell, all that this movie stems down to is fear-mongering and the audience is just simply biting into it. From what I gathered this story was based on actual events and yes I admit it's sad that these cases do happen. However, at the same time, the movie is so one-sided it's preposterous. Aside from that the events following the case lack in anything uplifting, energetic or eye-opening or any other terminology words that the Oscar hacks like to utilize. This movie fails miserably that can't be repaired.
Angelina Jolie stars as single-mother Christine Collins. She works as a telephone operator and is one of the best workers on the staff. When she gets called into work one fine Saturday she leaves her son Walter (Gattlin Griffith) at home by himself. When she returns home, the boy has vanished. Five months has passed, she gets the news that the cops have found a boy located in Illinois that suitably matches Walter's description. When she arrives that the station, she is surrounded by reporters and police who are just trying to conceal their corrupt reputation as they reveal the boy to her. When she sees the boy, she confirms that this child is not Walter. But the cops knowing they goofed still want Christine to take the child anyways. She then tries to take the case even further with the chief of police Captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) that even though the proof that the boy they found was not Walter, he declares that Christine has serious mental disorders. And when she refuses to dismiss the case, the LAPD have her institutionalized to an asylum. While there she's befriended by fellow inmate named Carol Dexter (Amy Ryan) who instructs her on getting by in the loony bin. Meanwhile on her side, a local Reverend Gustav Brieglab (John Malkovich) who opposes corruption stands up to defends Christine's case while the token good cop Lester Ybarra (Michael Kelly) makes a grisly discovery involving a tip about a missing child who was abducted by crooked Canadian criminal.
This movie clearly is every mother's worst nightmare. When we go to the cinemas, we want to be entertained and thrilled and to chase our troubles and insecurities away. So why do we need to watch a movie where real events like this one could happen to anyone at any time? What makes matters worse is that it is so surreal to actually think the cops even back then would be so corrupt and uncaring it makes this true story feel as though the production never once took this subject matter very seriously. It just never felt convincing.
Sure director Clint Eastwood's intentions were good and Jolie did quite well in her respected role and had the emotions accurate in how any mother would react when faced in this dire situation. But the film quite insufferable and very painful to watch. When the final credits roll, there was no justice that truly prevailed. No feel-good moments were delivered here and it took a ton of excruciating frustrations for common sense to get through. And then some important details that could've been utilized to good effect were thrown out the window. Like why didn't they question the neighbours who were checking up upon Walter? That could've been a potential lead, but it was neglected because common sense was nowhere to be found. After all is said and done, "Changeling" is two hours and twenty minutes of torturous manipulation that took a serious story and made very little progression to make this story enthralling.