Changeling

I must admit that when Changeling arrived from Netflix, I had no idea what it was about. The movie opens set in the 1920's in Los Angeles. Angelina Jolie plays a single mother named Christine Collins working at the phone company as what appears to be a shift supervisor at a switchboard.

One Saturday Christine is called to work and she is forced to leave her son home by himself. She promises him she'll be home by dark and will take him to the movies the following day. When she returns home from work she finds that he has disappeared.

Calls to the Los Angeles Police Department are dismissed. She's told that he'll show up and they don't start searching for children until they've been missing for 24 hours. Frantic she searches the neighborhood all evening to no avail.

She struggles for months with the L.A.P.D. and finds them uncooperative and arrogant. Finally she is informed that her son has been found and a reunion is scheduled. She arrives at the reunion only to learn that the child they are handing over is not her child. Again, she is dismissed and told that she's been through a lot of stress and is just confused.

Her plight continues to be ignored by the police and she finally seeks help from Reverend Gustav Briegleb, played by John Malkovich, who broadcasts a radio show that criticizes the corruption within the police department and government of Los Angeles.

I do not wish to give away this movie, but the story it tells is a compilation of true stories from the 1920's. Christine Collins did, in fact, have her child kidnapped and she was given a child that was not hers. With the help of Reverend Briegleb, she sues the city and exposes the corruption that has been gripping the city.

Furthermore, though not officially connected, there was a lunatic outside of Los Angeles that had murdered dozens of young boys and buried them on the property. The actual case was never resolved, but Christine Collins continued her fight, not only for missing children, but to fight corruption in politics and in the police department.

Changeling is about 2 hours and 20 minutes long, but kept my interested in the movie. I had to struggle to convince myself to pause it at the hour and 10 minute mark so that I could go to bed and finish watching it the following night. The movie made me angry, it made me sad. Angelina Jolie did an excellent job, as did director Clint Eastwood. In recognition for her work, Jolie was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. The movie is Rated R for language and some disturbing violence.

I give this movie 4 stars.