For all of the outrage, frustration, and horror evoked by the actual events that inspired Changeling, there is something about director Clint Eastwood’s creation that left me cold. In part I think it is the casting of Angelina Jolie as the single mother whose nine-year-old son disappears one afternoon, 
only to have a boy clearly not hers “reunited” with her six months later with the help of a Los Angeles Police Department that was desperate for positive publicity amongst the growing public discontent over accusations of corruption and Machiavellian tactics. In order for this tale to have an air of believability, the mother must be weak enough to acquiesce to the charade at first yet summon enough person strength to eventually fight back when the backlash from the police becomes increasingly brutal. Jolie’s performance is very good, though perhaps not one of the five best of the year. But from her very first scene she gives off a subtle but steely grit that makes her initial softness under pressure seem out of tune. And as the police captain who is primarily responsible for the abuses, Jeffrey Donovan delivers a one-dimensional portrayal to a character that needs some ambiguity. Did he initially believe that the mother was mistaken and that they had returned the right child? Was he acting under extreme duress to protect the image of the department but harboring doubts about the case? Or was he just a malicious tyrant who couldn’t care less about the consequences? It would be one thing if the script and the performance left these questions genuinely in doubt. But they work together so disharmoniously that we never really believe in the stakes. Given how grave they actually were, that’s really too bad.
Changeling
February 20th, 2009 · No Comments
Tags: Biographical · Capsule · Crime/Noir · Drama
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
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