A powerful, harrowing true story which makes your blood boil

Rating: 10/10 (24 March 2009)

Having overcome my reluctance to watch this movie (as I thought it would be profoundly depressing), I must say how rewarding and informative it was. Based on a true story of a mum (Christine Collins, played by Angelina Jolie) who is convinced to work on her day off, leaving her young son (Walter Collins, played by Gattlin Griffith) at home, alone, only to return later that night to find him missing. The rest of the story is an absolute nightmare. Christine must deal with a corrupt police force which is more interested in good press than good outcomes for victims of crime.
Set in 1920's Los Angeles, attention to period detail is excellent, it seems to me. One of the ways that this movie is informative is in how it shows Los Angeles to be a spitting image of those present day, corrupt South American cities where the only thing worse than gang violence is...police violence. The revelations about police conduct in this era is jaw-dropping. Other revelations about civil institutions are also frightening.
The cast in this movie is uniformly strong and effective. One of my reasons for being reluctant to see this movie was seeing excerpts on movie review shows on TV where John Malkovich's character, Rev. Gustav A. Briegleb was shown. He seemed really weird in excerpts, but watching the movie, he comes across a lot better, being a staunch ally of Christine in her dealings with the L.A.P.D.
In the header, I mentioned that this is a movie which makes your blood boil. The main reason for that is just glimpsing how the city's powerful and elites function. Of course, your blood can boil so much that you don't give credit to the actors who push all your buttons and make you fume with outrage. Actors like Jeffrey Donovan, who plays Capt. J.J. Jones, and Colm Feore, who plays Chief James E. Davis. Other sundry characters who Christine encounters are similarly infuriating. As someone who lives in somewhat more enlightened times than Christine did, it's shocking to see how her case was handled, back in the day.
Captain J.Jones is perhaps the most ghastly specimen of humanity in the movie. He is so narcissistic and selfish that his own incompetence (at best) does not register with him. It's doubtful I've ever seen a character who is more of a man-child than him.
My blood hasn't boiled this much since I saw "Capturing the Friedmans", a docu which also deals in crime and justice. The subject of that docu is morally ambivalent in a way in which Christine Collins isn't, but the conduct of the police against him is just as troublesome. There is also a brilliant Australian mini-series with similar themes of crime and justice in "Through my eyes", which was also based on a true story.
No doubt the facts of the story have been embellished and even fabricated no doubt, to increase the drama, but I have no doubt that the real facts of the case are sufficient for a powerful movie. It would be a pity if some fabrications have been made in order to make the Collins' family seem more heroic than they actually were-I do not think that they would be lesser subjects for a movie if they hadn't done half of what they are depicted of doing in this movie.
Director Clint Eastwood has another movie out around the same time as this one, "Gran Torino". "Changeling" is the superior movie in my view..."Gran Torino" is just average. Am not sure if "Changeling" was up for Academy Awards in 2008-if it was released in time for that year's awards, I feel that it was definitely a contender for "Best Picture" amongst other awards. If it was released after the cut-off date for that year's awards, then I feel that it must be a contender for "Best Picture" in 2009, along with "Watchmen".
Although the movie does not go into the ultimate fate of the 'changeling' of the title, the last we see of him just increases the number of unanswered questions the movie raises. A post-script to this aspect of the movie would have been appreciated. A meeting between Christine and a man with knowledge of her son's fate also seemed a proper subject for a footnote...I mean, I'm not sure that this meeting really took place, so this man's story could have been dealt with by a post-script to the story.
A great movie.