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Changeling
(by Week of November 19, 2008 - November 19, 2008)
Clint Eastwood should have been a spokesman for AARP. He made more brilliant movies after the age of 55 than most filmmakers will in their entire careers.
“Changeling” is the first sign that someone needs to put Eastwood in cinematic assisted living.
Angelina Jolie plays Christine Collins: a single mom raising her young son in 1920s Los Angeles. One day her son goes missing.
After a miserable month of waiting, the police report that they have recovered the lost child. The LAPD is almost as ecstatic as Christine, since charges of violence and corruption have left them desperate for good publicity.
The problem is: the boy that they found isn’t really Christine’s child. When she reports the police’s grievous error to the officer in charge, he argues that she is wrong! Rather than risk another public embarrassment, the LAPD systematically covered up their mistake and even locked Christine in an asylum to try to shut her up.
Thanks to Christine’s fearless resolve and the work of a muckraking Presbyterian minister (played by John Malkovich) with a radio show, the truth about the LAPD’s heinous behavior was exposed.
If the film had concluded with Christine being released from the mental institution and learning what truly happened to her son, then “Changeling” would have been a good drama and an effective message movie.
Eastwood makes a terrible error in judgment by dragging the film out for another solid hour. He takes us way past any kind of logical climax, and instead bores us with indictments and trials and hearings. There are dozens of mind-numbing scenes of Christine sitting quietly in the middle of crowded courtrooms watching trials.
Clint Eastwood’s best films, like “Unforgiven” and “Mystic River,” grow more tense and emotionally powerful as they go along. “Changeling” becomes absolutely unwatchable.
Not only are the courtroom scenes superfluous and dull, they actually undercut the movie’s important moral message.
During the first 90 minutes, Eastwood makes a strong argument that a large city’s police force can easily become a frightening menace if its leaders become corrupt.
Eastwood observes the harsh truth that the police are effectively above the law, and we are absolutely reliant on individual officers to do the right thing. Because if enough people on the police force agree that their power and reputation is more important than serving the public, they can do pretty much whatever they want and silence anyone who dares to fight back.
The more we see justice being done and all of the story’s loose ends being tied together, the more Eastwood’s argument loses its punch. By the end, he seems to be saying: “don’t worry: the truth always comes out and evildoers get what’s coming to them.”
I don’t want to say that the old guy has lost his touch, but someone really needs to step in and help Eastwood edit his next picture to avoid another unfocused, overlong disaster like this.
“Changeling” is a good 90 minute movie foolishly drawn out to a bloated, 2 Ω hour snoozefest. It is very disappointing.
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