Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Jeffrey Donovan, Jason Butler Harner, Michael Kelly, John Malkovich, Geoff Pierson
Nine-year-old Walter Collins disappeared from his Los Angeles neighborhood in March 1928. Months later, the beleaguered LAPD proclaims great news. The boy was found in rural Illinois and will be returned home to his relieved mother Christine (Jolie), who waited patiently and with bated breath for months for any news of his whereabouts. One hitch: The boy who returns is not Walter, despite the department's assertion that he is. "A mother knows," says Christine, who is nonetheless forced to take the boy home to "try him out for a few weeks," as if he's a new toy. This boy is four inches shorter than Walter and has dental and medical records which don't match Walter's. When Christine relays this information to Captain J. J. Jones (Donovan), he has her committed to a psychiatric ward.
Why would the LAPD try and pass off this boy as Walter Collins? One reason is because they needed any kind of public relations win they could muster after a series of scandals and the daily radio broadcasts of crusading Rev. Gustav Briegleb (Malkovich), who makes it his daily mission to criticize the corrupt department. With men like Jones on the force, who could blame him? The department's attempt to strongarm Christine into accepting that his boy is indeed her son is only one reason Changeling promotes anger and outrage in the viewer. The movie is based on a true story, and from what I've read about the case, the movie is mostly faithful to the original story.
A subplot, which almost feels like another movie, is soon introduced in the form of Gordon Stewart Northcott (Harner), a Canadian man who kidnaps and kills young boys. LAPD detective Lester Ybarra (Kelly) arrests a teenager who is in the country illegally and stumbles across Northcott's crimes. Was Walter among the kidnapped and possibly killed by Northcott? It's possible, and with the time the department wasted trying to convince Christine that the boy they found was her son, they could've been searching for the real Walter.
What director Clint Eastwood projects in his inimitable way is the sense of hopelessness ordinary people like Christine face when going up against the machine that is the LAPD. Christine has a good job as a supervisor at the telephone company and a nice bungalow in a quiet neighborhood, but her world is naturally flipped upside-down forever with the loss of her child. A crayon drawing by Walter hangs in his room, even as the phony Walter sleeps in his bed. When Northcott (played by oozing creepiness and smarminess by Jason Butler Harner) enters the picture, Changeling adds another nightmarish dimension because we don't know exactly how many others are suffering the same fate as Walter and his mother. Jolie's performance is all the more powerful because it doesn't contain flourishes or reach for effect. At times, Jolie presents uncommon restraint with her character even if the face of obvious police misconduct. She only wants her son found and still has misplaced faith that the LAPD will do the right thing.
Eastwood hammers home a consistent point with a precise attention to detail: The LAPD had earned its reputation from which it took years to recover, so much so that a seemingly open and shut case against O.J. Simpson could be tainted by it.
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