Review of Changeling (2008) by Jeffrey N — 08 Oct 2014

I've been a fan of J. Michael Straczynski for many years. It's been impressive to see him make the leap from comic books to books, television, movies, etc. I see Neil Gaiman following very quickly in his footsteps. That being said, I was quite surprised to see JMS migrate out of his sci-fi genre into a historical film about a very odd criminal case from the late 1920's, more commonly referred to as the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders.

Years ago, a contact with Los Angeles County called JMS and told him that the county was about to go through a house cleaning and destroy some documents on a strange case in which JMS might be interested. Those documents, after years of development, resulted in Clint Eastwood's Changeling.

While being an interesting niche story about a single, working woman in the late 1920s who, out of need, must leave her son home alone every day while she works. One day she comes home to find her son missing. After weeks of no progress by the oft-criticized, corrupt LAPD, she gets a call saying that her son has been found. Once reunited with her son, she realizes that this child is not hers. Only the LAPD, needing to save face, make her think she's crazy for thinking he isn't her child.

The story then follows two different paths that eventually converge. One is the fight Angeline Jolie, who plays the mom, Christine Collins, endures with the LAPD, and all of the unethical and illegal actions taken against her as she tries to prove the LAPD has not found her child. The other is about the true perpitrators of the crime and the activities happening in the chicken coops in Wineville, CA.

Angelina's performance is very good, if not, at times, overdramatic, which doesn't seem all that unusual given the subject matter and her role in it. However, what absolutely kills this movie is the directing. Like I've said recently, I just don't understand Hollywood. When is someone going to tell Clint Eastwood that he is a piss poor director??

I read an interview with JMS, who said that he wrote one major draft of this movie. And the only element he had to change was an incorrect reference about Scrabble, which this movie pre-dates by a couple of years. Other than that, he asked Eastwood about rewrites. Clint's response? No...the draft is fine as it is. Let's just shoot the draft.

I'm convinced this is how he operates all the time.

Now, admittedly, I have not seen Million Dollar Baby. And I've been told I would think differently if I saw it. And I did like Flags of our Fathers and I love High Plains Drifter. However, the list of bad, overrated Clint Eastwood films can wallpaper my bedroom.

Mystic River? Space Cowboys? Bridges of Madison County? Unforgiven? Pale Rider? Firefox? Bronco Billy? My God...all horrible movies.

The common theme in all of these films, however, is slow, painful pacing. Now, it worked in High Plains Drifter. Very well. In fact, the pacing is probably very good for most Westerns, even though Unforgiven and Pale Rider are two of the worst Westerns I've ever seen. In any case, his slow, drawn-out pacing in his movies can only be appropriate if the story lends itself to that pacing. Unfortunately, most of them don't.

Changeling is no different.

The subject matter is clearly very interesting. The actors perform very well, including an underrated performance by Jason Butler Harner as the main criminal, Gordon Northcott. Cinematically, the scenes are beautiful as well, with an almost black-and-white feel, even though it's in color. The problem is the pacing.

Eastwood should have rewritten several scenes. Some were unnecessarily long. Some were unnecessary period. The movie was way longer than it needed to be and felt every minute as long. It should have been restructured as well as there were numerous times that the story felt as though it were ending, but then it wouldn't.

There was a point at the very end when the Eastwood explains in succinct, printed words a short epilogue of what happens to the characters years later. What I couldn't help but think, especially after finding out that there were several pieces of history left out of the epilogue, as well as the movie itself, is that the movie could have ended about 45 minutes early and most of the later scenes summarized in the same epilogue. It's almost as though Clint's slow, soft-spoken demeanor is related to the pace at which he thinks, and therefore shows up in his slowly-paced films.

The story is an interesting one though, but I would definitely recommend supplementing the mediocre film with additional research on the Internet.