Clint Eastwood’s unprecedented winning streak continues with “Changeling.” A throwback to the hard-bitten Hollywood dramas of the 1930s and ’40s, the film reinvents old-time virtues for a new millennium and is an instant companion piece to Roman Polanski’s 1974 classic “Chinatown.”
Like Polanski’s neo-noir, “Changeling” is a fictionalized but historically detailed examination of Los Angeles’ tainted, criminally corrupt past.Set between 1928 and 1935, “Changeling” tells the essentially true story of Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie in an Oscar-caliber turn), a working, single mother, whose 9-year-old son Walter (Gattlin Griffith) goes missing without a trace.
Eager for a public-relations coup, sadistic L.A. Police Capt. J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan), who returns the wrong child to a horrified Christine, insists the distraught mother take the boy anyway. When she then goes on a crusade to get her real son back, Jones, aided and abetted by police Chief James Davis (Colm Feore) and Mayor Cryer (Reed Birney), smears her, accusing her of being an unfit mother. Christine’s only defender is the Rev. Gustav Briegleb (Cambridge’s John Malkovich), a Presbyterian pastor with a radio pulpit.
A sensational piece of Robert Towne/James Ellroy-style storytelling by scripter J. Michael Straczynski, the film boasts a haunting score by Eastwood and a heroine labeled insane by a brutish society unable to detect a monster in its midst. It revisits some of the tropes Eastwood explored in his 2003 Boston-set-and-shot masterpiece “Mystic River.”
With the help of production designer James J. Murakami (“Letters From Iwo Jima”), Eastwood conjures up such landmark real-life dramas as “The Snake Pit” and “In Cold Blood” as well as a red-streetcar-replete Jazz Age Los Angeles.From its underdog heroine and Chaplin references to cowboys-and-Indians bedspread and fascination with L.A. true crime, “Changeling” is steeped in film industry legend and lore.
As the “helpless” woman who takes a stand against the city’s seemingly invincible law enforcement agencies and political machines, Jolie is initially strident, but her performance becomes absolutely transcendent.Period cloche hats accentuate Jolie’s sculptured features, especially those swollen, pomegranate-colored lips. Luminous, individual shots of her by the great Tom Stern transform the actress into a Depression-era Madonna.
As a prostitute unjustly condemned to a psycho ward by the police, Amy Ryan (“Gone Baby Gone”) channels vintage Thelma Ritter. Jason Butler Harner (“John Adams”) is unforgettably creepy as a serial killer. Peter Gerety and Michael Kelly also are standouts as a despicable physician and dedicated LAPD cop, respectively. The performances across the board are first-rate. If you love movies, “Changeling” is like a dream date with Joan Crawford.