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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: Universal Studios
Salesrank: 1165
Released: February 17, 2009 |
| Our Price: $6.97 |
| Used Price: $2.05 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 17-FEB-2009
Media Type: DVD
Description of Changeling:
Clint Eastwood’s mastery as a director, established over the past decade and a half with Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima, and others, continues with Changeling, a 2008 offering based on a shocking but all-too-true story about child abduction and police corruption in 1920s Los Angeles. Single mother Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie, excellent in a role with somewhat limited parameters) finds her 9-year-old son, Walter, missing when she returns home from work one day. She files a report with the Los Angeles Police Department, an outfit that was wildly unpopular at the time (in his regular radio broadcast, a crusading pastor played by John Malkovich decries the force as "violent and corrupt," adding that "our protectors are our brutalizers"). When a child roughly matching Walter’s description turns up in Illinois five months later, the LAPD, intent on salvaging its tattered reputation, is only too eager to claim that he is Collins’ missing child. Little matters that he’s three inches shorter, is circumcised (Walter wasn’t), and fails to pass muster with Walter’s dentist, schoolteacher, and others; the cops, in particular the odious Captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan), insist that the mistake is Christine’s, not theirs. What follows is almost too nightmarish to believe--except that it actually happened. Exasperated by Collins’ continued claim that "Walter" is a fraud, they trot out a doctor to reinforce the bogus ID, declare her unfit as a mother, and finally have her committed to a local psychopathic ward. Through it all, Collins, bolstered by the pastor and thousands of outraged Angelenos, refuses to sign a document that would exonerate the police for their egregious error. As for Walter, it’s only when the LAPD’s seemingly only honest detective (Michael Kelly) takes matters into his own hands that the grisly mystery of the child’s fate begins to be solved. That would have been a good place for the film to conclude, too. Unfortunately, it goes on for more than another half hour, with innumerable false endings that add nothing to the story and could just as easily have been summarized with a few sentences before the final credits. That flaw aside (and it’s a major one), Changeling is a powerful film, with a realistic period feel, a wonderfully muted vibe and color palette, and an understated score by Eastwood himself. --Sam Graham
Stills from Changeling (Click for larger image)
Changeling Reviews:
Sad movie based on a true story! 
2009-12-03 - Christine Collins, a mother of a 9 year old son, returns home from work one day to realize her boy is missing. She reports this incident to the police, who few months later find another boy that matches her son's features and deliver him to Christine. Christine denies that this is her boy where in fact the police insisted that he is. When Christine keeps denying this is her boy and goes to the press, the police uses all means possible to keep her mouth shut, including throwing her in a mental hospital without a warrant.
Quite sad movie where every mother will strongly relate to Christine's feelings and sacrifices made in search of her son.
Justice prevails in the end, however not necessarily with a happy ending.
Angelina Jolie and the rest of the cast performed their roles in this movie extremely well.
Amazing movie
2009-11-28 - If this wasn't a true story, you would probably think it was far fetched. I think that's partially what makes it so good. The entire time you watch you just can't believe that this happened. A missing child, the wrong child returned home & forced on the single mother, a corrupt police force determined not to be embarrassed even at the expense of a child, nobody willing to listen, a mother labeled as crazy but still unwilling to give up & the ending that leaves you both horrified & amazed. Angelina Jolie delivers an emotional performance & I can't imagine anyone else playing the part. This is by far one of the best movies I have seen in some time.
Plodding, plodding, plodding..... 
2009-11-21 - This is a 2 and a half hour movie...yet there is no reason in the world it needed to be this long. It's a pretty simple story. Cut an hour out of it and give it some "oomph" and it would have been fascinating.
By the end I really didn't care to see the finish...it didn't seem to matter to me at all what the final outcome was.
Here's the story:
One day in 1920's Los Angeles a single mother comes home from work one day and her son is gone. She frantically calls the police and they aren't very helpful. Luckily, a local minister with a radio show broadcasts her story, creates a stink about it. The police find her son and re-unite them. But it's not her son. But the police assure her she's just confused from the trauma etc. She goes to dentists, neighbours, teachers, etc. and they all agree with her; it's not her son. So she hounds the LAPD some more. They throw her in a mental ward to shut her up. Meanwhile, a serial killer (who killed 20+ children) is discovered, and her son is among the dead (perhaps). The minister gets a lawyer and storms the mental hospital, freeing the mother. They all expose what the LAPD did (the switcheroo with the kid to shut up the public about him gone missing when they should have been finding that serial killer, and locking her and other women up in a mental ward to shut them up). The LAPD captains lose their jobs, the serial killer is hanged. THE END.
That's it. That's basically all that happens in the film. It really shouldn't be that long.
It just drags and drags and drags. There's a "serial killer in court" scene, a "serial killer talks to the mother scene", and a "serial killer gets hanged scene" tacked onto the end...all for no reason at all. They could have just shown a 5 second clip of him being hanged and we would lose nothing from it. Same thing with the police captain trial. He loses his job and the courtroom all claps and cheers wildly. All of this can be cut. It's just all padded nonsense.
Also, they threw in some historical inaccuracies just for kicks. The serial killer actually killed the boys along with his mother; there were 4 boys killed, not 20+, no boys escaped from the ranch, etc.
I suggest just reading the wikipedia page and giving the movie a pass:
[...]
I'd give it 6 stars if I could
2009-11-18 - Wow, am I glad I gave THIS fairly lengthy film a chance! Clocking in at just over 2 hours and 20 minutes.
You know the story by now- a mother comes home to find that her son is missing. She does EVERYTHING in her power to try and find him, except, since the story takes place in the late 1920's, a young single woman has to face another challenge- trying to convince the local police her son is actually missing.
The cops are so crooked they actually think the mother isn't really concerned over her son and believes she WANTS her son to remain missing so she can start another life with possibly someone else, lol. That's just one of many irrational theories a certain officer at this police department had in mind.
What makes Changeling so unbelievably good is the writing. It's solid, it's brilliant, it's moving, and to be completely honest, it might even be perfection.
*Every single scene* is the very definition of captivating. Angelina Jolie gives us a performance I wasn't sure the girl even had in her. She plays the concerned/emotional mother role perfectly the entire time.
When the police try convincing her that a completely unrelated child is her own son, the story intensifies. When the police pretend Angelina's character has mental problems and doesn't even realize her own son is standing right in front of her which prompts the police to send her to a mental hospital for a lengthy visit, the story intensifies even *more*.
Guess what? That's only HALF of the things that makes this film so good. The other half of the story focuses on her son, or rather, without giving anything away, something really really horrible that her son was a part of. Unbelievable.
I HIGHLY recommend Changeling.
Jolie's Best Role By a Mile
2009-09-30 - This is Another masterpiece from Clint Eastwood. Jolie shines as Christine Collins who is the mother of a missing boy who disappears while she fulfills her obligations as a roller skate wearing telephone operator supervisor at a huge substation in LA. There are many twists to the story resulting from LAPD bugling yet another case in their long laundry list of mishandled crime investigations. Jolie plays the role of a hard working, intelligent, sensitive, unrelenting, hopeful mother who is tirelessly looking for her son. She becomes aided by John Malkovich who follows her case closely, using his bully pulpit to expose the LAPD for all of it's inconsistencies. Malkovich again shows why he's revered as the greatest character actor that ever donned a supporting role. All this starts out when a boy is retrieved from Illinois where he is used as a surrogate for her real son. Jolie is able to sell the fact that mothers are the ones that really know their sons. The LAPD takes the fact that Jolie's refusal to accept the boy as her son as being authentic to being delusional, shirking responsibility and "just plain nuts" Jolie then is "thrown" into the insane asylum where she undergoes many demeaning things. Jolie shows how smart and clever she can be in this role by assimilating herself into the asylum population while being conformant with the hospital doctors to prove she is not insane. If you watch carefully during the scenes where Christine Collins is restrained there is a day nurse that is played by Riki Lindhome who also plays the character of Mardell Fitzgerald in Eastwoods classic "Million Dollar Baby".
The movie takes a twist when Malkovich character exposes that the LAPD is having women incarcerated in a mental hospital when they are deemed public relations risks by the LAPD. Jeffery Donavan plays the stereotypical role of the Irish police captain who gets caught in the middle of a mess when it is found that citizens are wrongly put in the mental hospital and a second part of the mystery is uncovered when a runaway illegal alien from Canada reveals that he helped Gordon Northcutt in the mass murder of 20 boys at his ranch. This all comes to a head in a double trial where the mass murder and LAPD are both put on trial in a secretive proceeding put on a alternate docket to avoid press coverage. Jason Butler Harner's creepy portrayal of the ice cold mass murder Northcutt showed this deranged man, and his twisted attraction to Jolie's character which culminates to an unprecedented meeting between his character and Jolie's to finally confess to killing her son, However on her arrival he reneges on his deal to tell all, for fear of "going to hell". Jolie's interaction in this scene is electric when she repeatedly asks him "did you kill my son" over and over finally pressing herself to him nose to nose with gritted teeth. To me this was the epitome of great acting. I have this Tivoed on my system and highly recommend it be added to your DVD collection
