A tale of abuse and corruption

Rating: 9/10 (30 October 2008)

It's ironic that because of the 1950s TV drama "Dragnet," Los Angeles got the reputation of being a city with a squeaky clean, incorruptible police department. It's ironic because nothing could be further from the truth for much of the city's history.
The 1920s and most of the thirties were particularly lawless decades for LA cops. LA was overflowing with gambling houses and bordellos all operating virtually openly. Cops were involved in one scandal after another, including a police chief caught during Prohibition in the back seat of a police car with a bottle of booze and a half naked hooker; vice squad cops caught up in a badger game targeting a city councilman; and the commander of the police intelligence division convicted of attempted murder in the bombing of the car of a special investigator for the grand jury looking into police corruption.
One of the hardest incidents to comprehend was the 1928 disappearance of 9-year-old Walter Collins, and his return five months later thanks to the "detective work" of the LAPD. That was a case that might have been completely forgotten by now but for one thing -- the boy's incredulous mother who took one look at the returning kid and said "That's not my son!" What could have prompted the LAPD to substitute another kid for the missing boy? Awash in a constant stream of bad publicity, targeted by reformers and plagued by the fact that it was a department of thieves, thugs, and incompetents, the 1928 department under Chief James "Two Guns" Davis was apparently desperate for any good publicity and returning a missing kid to his hard working, single mom seemed full proof. But for one thing: Mom was tougher than Davis and conducted a non stop crusade to uncover the truth and find her real son.
Sadly, unfolding at the same time was the repugnant tale of a serial killer operating out of a chicken ranch in nearby Riverside county and how he was abducting and murdering young boys.
All these elements --the Collins case, the police corruption story and the tale of the serial killer -- are expertly woven together by director Clint Eastwood into a movie that grows more interesting as it goes.
Expertly cast and beautifully mounted (the art direction is a shoe in for an Oscar nomination)the film nonetheless lives or dies on the performance of Angelina Jolie, who plays the mom, Christine Collins. Many of Jolie's roles don't do much to test her acting chops, this one does and she more than meets the challenge, turning in a beautifully controlled performance that should get her another Oscar nod too.
If I have a criticism, it is that the movie in the end gives the impression the corruption may have ended when Chief Davis was demoted following the Collins case. He was demoted, to head of the traffic division, but was made Chief again when Frank Shaw became mayor.
Corruption at city hall and in the police department simply exploded and there were so many abuses by the central vice squad, the Intelligence Division and the "Red Squad" of strike breakers and gun thugs that they eventually led to the 1938 recall of Mayor Shaw and a general house cleaning of the police department, which forced out Davis and more than 40 other high ranking officers.
But see the movie. This one is certainly worth seeing.