Fascinating story, less fascinating movie

Rating: 6/10 (13 March 2012)

Here is a story which would be impossible to believe if it weren't actually true. In Los Angeles in 1928 a nine-year-old boy, Walter Collins, goes missing. Months later he is found and the LAPD sets up a triumphant, highly publicized, reunion between Walter and his mother Christine. There's a problem. Immediately upon seeing the boy Christine knows that this is not her son. Desperate for good press the LAPD is quick to hush Christine up and prods her to take the boy home on a trial basis. Seriously, that's what they said. Take him home, try him out, maybe you'll like him. Christine has little patience for this charade. She continues to insistently state the obvious. This boy is not her son. She wants answers. What she gets is a one-way ticket to the psychopathic ward.
On the surface the movie appears to be about one woman's fight for the truth, her fight for her son. It's also about the incompetence and corruption of the LAPD and director Clint Eastwood unfortunately hammers that angle to death. The LAPD of this time was full of bad, vile characters. We get it. As the cliché of the big, bad police department gets beaten into the ground there has to be the other corresponding movie cliché. That would be the one good, honest cop who wants to get to the bottom of things. And in this case getting to the bottom of things takes the movie to some very dark and horrifying places.
The story of the missing Walter Collins ties into a bigger picture storyline. That bigger picture is too awful to even want to contemplate. Here give Eastwood some credit. He didn't exploit the horror. He chose to stick closely to the story of Christine Collins, her quest to find her son and her battles with the LAPD. Eastwood gives us enough information to realize the awful nature of what has been done and to understand the sick, twisted evil of the villain who is introduced into the film. But at its heart the movie is always about Christine Collins. This was a brave woman who, faced with so many obstacles, never wavered in her quest for the truth and never lost hope of being reunited with her Walter. That makes for a great story but there are too many nagging issues here to make this a truly great movie.
Angelina Jolie gives a highly-charged performance in the role of Christine. But there are times she goes a little too far. Obviously there are tremendous emotional highs and lows in Christine's story but when Jolie lays it on a bit thick the effect is jarring. One scene near the end is most notable, Jolie hamming it up to such an extent it takes you out of the movie entirely. All you're thinking is "Angie dear, come back to us." Many of the supporting characters fall flat, most notably Christine's main LAPD adversary, Captain Jones. He's a bland, boring, rather ineffectual foil for Christine. John Malkovich, playing well against type as a radio preacher, and Jason Butler Harner as the exceedingly eccentric villain have their moments. But other than that it's Jolie's show all the way. And her performance doesn't quite sustain the movie over a rather excessive 140 minute running time. Eastwood's relentless hammering of the LAPD wears thin rather quickly. Yes, the police in this true-life story were corrupt and incompetent and pretty much completely awful. But Eastwood belabors the point to at times tedious effect. All in all, for as fascinating a story as there is to work with, there is the sense the movie never fully ignites. It simmers but never boils. A reasonably decent film but clearly not one of Eastwood's best efforts.