CHANGELING (2008)

directed by Clint Eastwood


You wouldn't think the LAPD could be such dicks.... (heh)... but apparently it happened, and it happened pretty much just the way Clint Eastwood and screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski says it does. And it is almost absolutely true, with maybe a few disheartening details and some of the nastier bits indicated rather than flat-out shown.

Christine Collins, a female supervisor in 1928 (which basically makes her absolutely awesome), is called in to work one day just as she and her child Walter (Gattlin Griffith) are about to go to the cinema. She leaves her kid at the house and never sees him again (in real life, she gives him the dime and tells him to go to the movies by himself, which makes more sense, but also makes her somewhat negligible).

There's a search for the kid which takes about six months, and when the LAPD very proudly find him again, Christine shows up at the train station to be reunited with... some kid that she's never seen before in her life. The LAPD essentially tells her if she doesn't think it's her kid, then she's batshit insane, and from then on, the film becomes mostly about her battle with them. It's told in a very straightforward manner (as are most Eastwood films), and you spend quite a few moments calling bullshit, when in fact (unlike A BEAUTIFUL MIND), most of what you're seeing actually happened. It's no wonder nobody trusts the cops. Somebody should make a good movie about them that doesn't criminalize them or make them look incompetent. I'm trying to remember one, but... I guess when they're actually doing their job, it's not very interesting. Although I do love me some LAW AND ORDER (espcially SVU)!

8.16/10