Changeling

Rating: 7/10 (15 November 2009)

This is a reasonably solid, well acted, interesting story, with good direction from Clint Eastwood. It just doesn't leave me overly enthusiastic about it. It has the requisite, if occasionally jarring, crowd pleasing moments, touches of Gothic horror, the darkness of the police corruption in the LAPD, a very disturbing and effectively done hanging scene. Yet it never quite goes deep enough in any direction enough to leave a lasting impact. It diffuses what could have been a very powerful compact tight film, by not concentrating on one or even two elements of the story. There are at least four or five different elements in this film that each could have demanded attention in their own right. So what happens is that film loses its focus, not in a fatal way; the film still is good make no mistake. Anjelina Jolie is good as Christine Collins whose son goes missing, and is convinced that the police have not found her son, but instead have landed her with an imposter. She then ends up being in an asylum through some law the police can use to incarcerate people they do not like or find awkward. As the story unfolds it becomes far darker, and it is clear that her son is unlikely to alive, and has almost certainly been murdered. Malkovich is good as the crusading preacher who takes her side against the police particularly Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) the overly done slick police captain. The moments of unintentional humour which soften the film, for example it is made to seem by a particularly clumsy scene that every one in the mental asylum is there because of police corruption. Then there is concession to a modern audience wanting a tough sassy heroine, rather than the probably terrified if still tough Chrisitne Collins. She says to the head psychiatrist ' f**k you and the horse you came upon' She may have said that in reality, but I suspect not, it was probably there as a bit of crowd pleasing. This lessons the reality of what must have been a terrifying ordeal. One scene such as the hanging scene although well done do cause you to wonder why it was there. Was it there so we could enjoy the death of the child killer, which I think in a film less subtle than this would have been understandable, but in a film trying to sophisticated seems awkwardly out of place. I could not help thinking that any chance of Christine Collins finding out the whereabouts of her son was gone forever with the killers death. If this had been the point of the hanging scene, then I think it should have been referred to in the story. There isn't much wrong with this film but some of the scenes to do seem awkward, and the tone of the film occasionally lacks the sensibility of the 20's and 30's in some minor but noticeable ways. None of the acting reaches the exceptional level, Angelina Jolie despite being a tad to glamorous for the role does show she has more range than I would have given her credit for. The film ticks all the good boxes, but none of the great boxes; not by much, but enough to be noticeable.