Beneath the surface of this film lies a better one...

Rating: 4/10 (19 November 2008)

Despite featuring an all-stops out performance from Angelina Jolie and the sure hand of director Clint Eastwood, the handsomely-produced Changeling is a frustratingly-uninvolving melodrama, burdened by criss-crossing story strands that keeps the audiences heart at arms length.
At different junctures, director Eastwood wants to a) engage us with the plight of his central character, a mother distraught at the disappearance of her only child and determined to find the truth behind his abduction; b) infuriate us with the intricacies and devious motivations of a corrupt L.A. police force; c) shock and indulge us with a graphic, disturbing trip inside the mind and world of a psychopath, and; d) intrigue us with the machinations of an open-ended kidnapping investigation.
Kudos for your bold intentions, Mr. Eastwood, but there is just to much going on for even you to get to the core of any of the issues involved.
What results is a long, Law & Order-style procedural that doesn't know when to quit.
The most frustrating aspect of watching this film is trying to reconcile the relationship between a lead actress who finds within herself the heartache and tragedy the arc her character requires and a director who knew how to get that performance out of her but who didn't have the discipline to pull it all together in the edit suite.
Eastwood the director lets down Jolie terribly; his refusal to precisely and compassionately tell her characters story at the expense of a more sweeping view of the consequences of the child's abduction robs the story of its most compelling element.
Eastwood also lets the film down in his heavy-handed approach to the support casting. Police officers are oh-so-bad; the vile kidnapper is a hammy caricature. And the extended sequences that portray the fate of not just one, but a group of abducted children are horrible. Given he covered similar terrain in Mystic River (another film wildly overrated), can Mr Eastwood please move on from his obsession with murdered children. Get back to exploring the ethology of the Wild West, Clint - your two best films as a director are Unforgiven and Pale Rider.
Expect recognition come awards time for Jolie, but the film fails to engage its audience and will not be remembered as one of Clint Eastwoods finer moments.