a true story is not a story

Rating: 1/10 (1 April 2009)

Life can be an inspiration for fiction but the artist who uses it must adapt it to tell a story of importance. There must be a beginning, an end and there must be a reason to tell.
In this, almost I would say worst movie ever, there is none. Yes, there is a beginning and an end, but they do not seem related and everything that happens in between happens for almost no reason at all. Just like in life, one could say, but that was clearly not the message of the makers.
No, they had to tell about... a woman losing a child and getting another one back. OK, might be interesting. But not if the woman's only reaction is to scream: "I want my son! This is not my son!" (And that about twenty-four times.) Then it's improvisation by amateur theater players. Not if the bad men are just bad men, no dimension, no nuance, just cruel and evil.
The script goes nowhere, does not know what to tell, and the heroine, the unbelievable bad acting Jolie, does not once take action. She is constantly invited by others to do anything.
The change from a 'give me back my son'-theme to a 'evil guy abducts little boys and slaughters them for his pleasure'-theme is made with no preparation, and the themes have nothing to do with each other. So, at once there are two stories to tell. Follows the 'psychiatry in the 20's was a fraud'-theme, with bad bad doctor man and evil sister woman. And, oh yes, the good hooker for good measure.
The last half hour adds nothing. Why do we get 10 minutes of hanging the crazy boy killer? The last scenes are good, but just because of the little boy and his mother, two sincerely played roles. The onlooking Jolie does what she does the whole film: get out the emotion and then repress it. A weak technique by a weak actress. (Oh, and of course, the hand to the mouth, another brilliant technique.) Malkovich is talking so unclear that you wonder if that was his revenge to be cast in this one penny melodrama.
Accompanied by music seeming to be made for a burial services commercial, this is an example of how a true story is not a story. Not if you don't have any clue what to tell and just tell everything: and then you get, instead of a possible sandcastle, a pile of mud.