Frustratingly one-dimensional morality play.

Rating: 5/10 (9 November 2008)

Among the most popular types of shows on television are shows about forensic criminology. CSI and all its fictional brethren get the ratings, but for me, the cream of the crop is Forensic Files on the former CourtTV. Since they're relegated to the world of the real, outlandish stories are usually few and far between, and they aren't particularly adept at misdirection (the first person accused is almost never vindicated), and yet, I prefer it over similar shows thanks to excellent pace, presentation and personality, namely the startling delivery of narrator Peter Thomas, a man with a voice that could make children playing hopscotch terrifying. This show continually came to mind throughout the extensive length of Clint Eastwood's Changeling, a film that disappointingly lacks both ghostly red balls and Odo and the Founders.
The film deals with a telephone operator in 1927 whose son goes missing, and is the victim of a police cover-up when they return a boy that isn't her own, and attempt to discredit her as crazy. When creating a film based upon a true story, you always run the risk that the story will be overly familiar to some audience members (I made it a point to avoid any and all details so as not to spoil it for myself), so, as stated, it comes down to pace, presentation and personality, and the film only partly succeeds. The opening jaunt through town in 1927 was wonderful in its feelings of the ordinary, the mundane; it's just life, and it was lovingly created. But this feeling quickly wore off, and the film soon became ordinary itself, the visuals becoming a drab non-issue. As for the other two P's, the film failed on all counts. Angelina Jolie turned on the wailing histrionics almost immediately, and her delivery and emotion ran false throughout (also, I was never, ever able to see the character, all I saw was Angelina). John Malkovich sleepwalked through his sparse character, with Jeffrey Donovan bringing up the abominable rear (the Lucky Charms leprechaun is a most believable Irish man).
Pertaining to pace, one look at the film's length should tell you all you need to know. Eastwood gives it a sort of three-act structure, none of which ring anything but contrived. In the first, Jolie screams MY SON MY SON MY SON and all the one-dimensional villains scream YOU'RE CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY, in the second, it's the same story, except she's in a mental hospital. The third becomes a sort of double court drama, and features not only its one moment of intrigue, but exacerbates exactly why this film doesn't work as a whole. Eastwood's cowboy origins show through in the characterization, as not a single character in the entire film is given an even two-dimensional shade. Jolie is so idealized I'm surprised her character wasn't sacrificed so she could float to heaven. In her presence, every other character becomes undershown. Malkovich is but a plot machination to spring her from the pen, and S.S. Hahn breezes in, has a righteous, and did I mention pro bono shoutdown. On the flipside, Chief Davis and J.J. Jones are so single-mindedly ignorant that Bud White would have whipped their asses on the spot, and Gordon Northcott is so preposterously, snivelingly evil that I'm amazed they allowed him to avoid a lengthy mustache for him to twirl.
Northcott's eventual denouement is all the more frustrating considering the film's one fleeting moment of worthwhile commentary: the convicted murderer's speech about how he had been railroaded, and never given a chance by a single person in the courtroom save for Jolie, who had never badmouthed him to the press, and never made any sort of announcement of judgment towards him. This comment made me confront my own feelings, as I too had convicted this man right off the bat, ignoring his every plea, rationalizing every claim he made as a falsehood, after having spent an entire film with a woman who was the victim of the exact same treatment. Unfortunately, this was but fleeting as the very next segment turns him into a blithely uncooperative kvetch, subsequently confirming his guilt in a scene so plainly obvious that it's not even treated as a surprise.
Changeling seems to have inclinations to not only win a lot of Oscars (and don't think I didn't make a joke during the film's credits about how we should have gone to see It Happened One Night at the Royal instead), but to be mentioned in the same breath as other legendary neo-noirish looks at the seedy side of old Los Angeles like Chinatown and L.A. Confidential, but those films were brilliantly scripted, breathlessly paced, and had characters that, if perhaps leaning one way or another, were all real people with real feelings and real motivations, and despite the fact that Changeling is based on a true story, none of the characters ever rang true for more than a moment, and I was a step ahead at every opportunity. I can tear up at the drop of the hat, a sucker especially for court dramatics, but even Matthew Harrison Brady was a man first, and "she wasn't thrown in, she was escorted"? Not even E.K. Hornbeck could be that heartless.
{Grade: 5/10 (C) / #51 (of 80) of 2008}