Movie Review - Changeling

Genre: Drama, Thriller

Director: Clint Eastwood

Starring: Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Jeffrey Donovan, Jason Butler Harner, Michael Kelly

Running Time: 141 minutes (plus trailers)

Angelina Jolie stars in Changeling, a film based on the real life kidnapping of Walter Collins from his home in Los Angeles in 1928. Jolie plays Walters mother, Christine Collins, who comes up against police corruption after the LAPD, in an attempt to get some good press, claim to have found her son. However, the child is an impostor, and when Christine tries to speak out, she is placed in a mental institution. Going in, this premise struck me as rather absurd, despite the declaration in the opening credits that Changeling is ‘a true story.’ Whether it is true or not, I discovered that this premise is definitely not interesting enough to sustain a film for close to two and a half hours.

But first, the good. The production design is excellent, and the cinematography beautiful. Angelina Jolie gives a heartwrenching performance as the grief stricken Christine Collins. John Malkovich’s performance was a little underwhelming, but the rest of the supporting cast is great, particularly Jason Butler Harner as real life serial killer Gordon Northcott and Colm Feore as Police Commissioner James E. Davis. Even the kids where great, and I am usually very critical of child actors. Moreover, Changeling explores ideas that I find absolutely fascinating. Themes of police corruption and the rights of women are hardly uncommon in period pictures, but the way in which they are developed here was really eye opening, particularly in the middle section of the film.

Where the movie failed was in keeping me engrossed. Like a lot of films based on real events, Changeling continually skips forward in time, and every time we see a new date flashed across the screen, it pulls us out of the movie. Likewise, the score was incredibly distracting. The movie also suffers enormously from structural issues. The first half hour of this film was fairly uninteresting, all though not that bad. The second act, which comes when Collins is thrown into the nut house, is terrific. But the third act takes an absolute nosedive. I won’t reveal what happens, but I will say that by the end of this film I was bored witless. Again, I can attribute this to Eastwoods desire to stay true to history, but there were so many scenes in the last fourty five minutes that could have been cut. At one point the film skips forward five years in time, which serves absolutely no purpose; the ending is ambiguous anyway, so why bother? Frankly, the serial killer subplot that is introduced halfway through would have made a far more interesting movie on its own; I found myself getting frustrated every time we cut back to Christine Collins, and it’s never a good sign when you’re no longer interested in the movies main character

As I mentioned previous, there are a lot of good aspects to Changeling. But all the cinematography in the world can’t make up for the fact that this film simply isn’t interesting enough to justify over two hours. Better editing could have made a world of difference, but sadly, Eastwood chose to be a little self indulgent, and the project suffered as a result. I really hope that one day someone makes a movie based on the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, which make up the best parts of this film. If my final rating seems harsh, it’s because I feel almost angry at how bored I was; there is a good movie within Changeling, but it is lost amongst the drek.

Changeling is in cinemas now.