Heart-Wrenching Drama

Rating: 8/10 (9 July 2010)

A woman's son goes missing and is returned to her by the police a few months later, except that it's a different boy. This is a heart-wrenching drama based on true events in 1920s L.A. Jolie gives a moving performance as the woman who must deal with not only the loss of her son, but also a corrupt police department determined to discredit her for insisting that the kid is not her son. Eastwood does a great job of evoking the period and building the tension. After an intriguing start, however, the film does seem to lose some its focus and lingers too much on subsidiary aspects of the case. The supporting cast is good, but why does Malkovich deliver his lines in a robotic cadence?