If You Want to Ensure Your Film Won't Be a Masterpiece, Cast Either Half of Brangelina

Rating: 7/10 (24 February 2009)

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are perfectly matched, as both boast beautiful faces and a painful lack of serious acting ability.
However, in an acting face off, I'd put my money on Jolie. She did much better with her 2008 Oscar-bait outing, "Changeling," than Pitt did with his, "The Curiously Boring and Pointless Case of the Blank-Faced Benjamin Button." Jolie plays Christine Collins, a single mother in 1928 Los Angeles whose son goes missing. When the corrupt police department return the wrong boy to her and she tries to raise a stink about it, they have her committed to a mental institution rather than admit their embarrassing mistake. But eventually, a grisly discovery becomes too large a story to ignore, and the LAPD is brought to task for its dirty dealings.
"Changeling" is a solid accomplishment from director Clint Eastwood. It's not anywhere nearly as good as his other 2008 film, "Gran Torino," but it's not nearly as bad as its critical reception had led me to expect. But the film succeeds largely in spite of Jolie's performance rather than because of it. Jolie is simply not able to make sense of this character. Maybe the fault is with the casting in the first place. We have to believe that Christine Collins is timid and mousy enough to allow herself, even for a moment, to believe that the boy returned to her is in fact her son, even though she's convinced he's not. But there's not a timid bone in Jolie's body, and that part of the film never makes an ounce of sense. The Christine Collins we see humbly bowing to the whims of the police doesn't match up with the Christine Collins we see in the workplace, barking orders in her role as a manager, or the flirty, glamour puss Collins that emerges toward the film's end. Pick a character, any character.
There are some quite disturbing scenes involving violence toward children (violence seems almost too mild a term for what's actually done to them), scenes that are only slightly less disturbing than the ones in which John Malkovich appears, playing a pastor who aids Collins in her fight against corruption. Malkovich, by simply appearing in a film, brings it a healthy dose of "ick" factor, but I liked him here probably more than I ever have, just because he's one of the only characters in the movie who's not a slimeball. Jeffrey Donovan, of "Burn Notice" fame, plays the chief of police and decides for some reason to use an Irish accent that never quite materializes completely. Amy Ryan also appears as a fellow inmate in the institution, and looks and sounds like she should be starring in a women's prison film set in 1987.
However, the film itself looks good, and though it meanders a bit, it's always engaging. Because Eastwood chooses to give it an old-time Hollywood movie feeling, some of the more histrionic and heavy-handed elements go down smoother than they might otherwise. Let's face it, the man knows his way around a movie set, and he's probably incapable of making an outright bad movie.
But next time, I might suggest that he check to see if Julianne Moore is available.
Grade: B+