| Overall Grade: |
A |
|
| Story: |
A |
|
|
| Acting: |
B+ |
|
|
| Direction: |
A+ |
|
|
| Visuals: |
A |
|
|
The Madness of Hope
by Jim B (movies profile)
Oct 23, 2008
41
of
47 people found this review helpful
Clint Eastwood again shows why he is one of Hollywood’s greatest and most appealing directors. He has a vision and a style that never wavers and only gets better.
“That is not my son”, Christine Collins says to Captain J.J. Jones of the LA police department but directed at the little boy standing in front of them at a railway station, and your insides take a dip, strapped in your life roller-coaster seat, you have begun the long descent on a never ending free fall into madness.
1928, Wineville California, a young adult Gordon Northcott and his young buddy brutally killed and buried two dozen boys they’ve snatched from residences in and around LA, just for the heck of it. Known as the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, this story begins with the disappearance of Walter Collins age nine, who is left home alone on a fated Saturday by his Mother Christine Collins, a single mother played by Angelina Jolie, so she may cover for a suddenly ill co-worker at the phone company. Christine eschews taking her son to the movies and when she returns home she finds her home empty. After searching the neighborhood into the night she phones the police for help but nothing can be done until a twenty-four’s hour missing threshold has been met. The news of a missing boy reaches the front pages of the newspapers in town and she and her missing son are big news.
Months after Walter’s disappearance , Christine Collins receives word the police, through thorough detective work, have found her son, he is alive and on his way home. Reporters are called to the train station for political fanfare, with the finding of the lost child the LA Police department will receive a much needed boost in citizen popularity, after being maligned for being corrupt. Ms. Collins says that is not my son, but Captain Jones insists she is mistaken. She takes the boy home on his insistence, thus the Changeling. Christine pleads with the Police Dept that they continue looking for her son.
Changeling delves into the entrenched corruption, within the LA Police Department, through the eyes of Christine Collins with the help of Reverend Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich) who transmits Gods message and his message of Police Corruption to his flock. This film also looks into Christine’s hope that her son is alive and will one day come home to her.
Clint Eastwood makes an obvious point in this film on the treatment of women in America then, and how a man’s word means so much more than a women’s. He has Ms. Collins on roller skates in a dress working as a supervisor in the Operators room at the Telephone Company, skating back and forth behind the Operators taking on troubles as they happen. Eastwood’s cinematic symmetry can be seen here; in a very clever way photographs the Operators, all female, as if they are caged Hens game fully clucking in a coop producing eggs for the market, watched from a windowed office by the men who are their superiors there, while their hatchlings are being snatched, straddled and beheaded in the confines of another chicken coop.
The detail in the costuming is impeccable, and the digital remake of some sets and obvious photo scenes throughout the film are done very well. Eastwood uses a color enhancement to give the feeling of living in a different time, and shoots all scenes with a steady hand. The sets are clean and minimal, adding to the effect of hospital sterility or more toward that of an asylum.
Angelina Jolie is more than adequate as Christine Collins though you can’t help think how far a more capable actor could carry this role. John Malkovich plays the angry Reverend to the T’s without much nuance, and Jeffery Donavan is truly wonderful as Captain J.J. Jones. Jason Butler Harner is tremendous as Gordon Northcott and Michael Kelly as Detective Lester Ybarra, is terrific. |
My Public Profile 
