Review of CHANGELING

January 28, 2009

***** SPOILER WARNING *****

A "changeling" in European folklore is an elf or other enchanted entity that is secretly left in the stead of an abducted child. Director Clint Eastwood takes this legend and applies the name to the 1928 case of Los Angeles woman whose boy went missing one day and another boy was returned to her. Incredible as it may sound, this is supposed to be a true story.

Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) is a single mom working as a supervisor in a telephone service. One day in March 1928 she came home from work to discover her son Walter missing. A few months later, the L.A. police return another boy to her who is clearly not her son. Despite her repeated protests (and I mean REPEATED), the police, specifically Capt. J.J. Jones (sinisterly played by Jeffrey Donovan) do not believe her and even put her in a mental institution!

While this was going on, Detective Lester Ybarra (Michael Kelly) stumbles upon a house where grisly murders of boys have been committed. This child murderer Gordon Northcutt (disturbingly played by Jason Butler Harner) would randomly pick up boys on the street, keep them in a chicken coop and mercilessly hacks them to death. An unwilling accomplice confessed to the crimes and identified Walter Collins as among the kids they had abducted.

Now for me everything else after this point, I felt the movie lost its focus. Instead of ending it right there, it still went on to depict in detail the murderer's escape to Canada, his capture there, the extensive trials (two simultaneous cases vs. Northcutt, and vs the LAPD), his fruitless audience with Christine before his execution and his hanging (complete with his spooky singing of "Silent Night")!

Not being satisfied with that, the movie even fast forwarded to five more years ahead, when a boy suddenly returned and revealed that he was among the kids abducted by Northcutt. He said that he remembered Walter, and that Walter was also able to escape. However, the movie ended with Christine still not being reunited with Walter at all.

As a result, the movie really felt very long. There were so many scenes that felt repetitive and unnecessary in the telling of the story. And I have not even mentioned the part of John Malkovich! I felt that Eastwood tried to milk everything out of this story, much to the detriment of the story telling.

Fortunately, the acting performance of star Angelina Jolie, upon whom the entire movie hinged, was sincere. She was very good in conveying subtleties of emotions required of her persecuted character. Her very heavy eye and lip make-up may be a bit too distracting at times to the drama, but otherwise, she was spot on. She deserves her Oscar nomination, along with the Academy citations for Art Direction and Cinematography that this film has earned.