"Changeling"

Changeling ****

With Changeling, Clint Eastwood continues to underscore his much-vaunted place as one of contemporary Hollywood’s finest storytellers. In such films as Mystic River and Million-Dollar Baby, he has taken complex, unsettling materials and imbued them with breathtaking power.
Directed by Eastwood, Changeling is no different, offering yet another impressive entry on the filmmaker’s resume. Set during the 1920s, Changeling provides a brilliant period rendering of prewar Los Angeles. It is also a film of remarkable dramatic and emotional power.
The story is set into motion in March 1928, when switchboard operator Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) returns home from work to discover that her nine-year-old son Walter (Gattlin Griffith) has disappeared into thin air. Christine’s nightmare is compounded when the LA police initially refuse to investigate.
For five grueling months, Christine searches in vain for any sign of Walter. And then the seemingly unthinkable happens: Captain Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) announces that the police have located Walter in, of all places, DeKalb, Illinois. During an elaborate photo-op involving Police Chief Davis (Colm Feore), Christine is subsequently reunited with Walter at the train station.
Only the child in question, it turns out, isn’t Walter at all. And to Christine’s great chagrin and trauma, nobody—including the imposter himself (Devon Conti) and Captain Jones—will believe her.
The manner in which Eastwood manages to ratchet up the events that lead to Christine’s undoing is the stuff of truly great cinema. Rather than resorting to movie trickery or overly dramatic musical flourishes, Eastwood conveys Christine’s real-life plight with subtlety and grace.
As Christine, Jolie turns in a top-drawer performance, particularly in terms of the ways in which she peels back the layers of her character’s persona, one by one, as Christine’s life spirals well beyond her control. Meanwhile, John Malkovich offers a robust turn as Reverend Briegleb, the LA talk-radio phenom who champions Christine’s cause when seemingly no one else will. Donovan provides an appropriately smarmy performance as Captain Jones, the corrupt cop who will stop at nothing to destroy and discredit anyone who disagrees with him.
A confident and well-wrought mystery, Changeling is one of the year’s best films.