Changeling (**1/2)

Structurally Clint Eastwood's "Changeling" is 2 hours and 20 minutes of an air tight, unwavering film with strong performances and made with the same authentic stylistic accuracy we've grown accustomed to seeing with Eastwood. My lukewarm rating of this film has less to do with the fundamentals than it has to do with how I felt while watching it. Let's make no bones about it, this film is disturbing and the creepy factor is off the charts. The very definition of the title alone gives me the heebie jeebie's. Changeling, as defined by Webster's Dictionary, a child surreptitiously or unintentionally substituted for another. Now you throw in the plot elements which include child abduction, police corruption, morbid Psychiatric Doctors, delusion, serial axe murders, of children no less, a hanging and electric shock therapy. All shot film noir-esque, like an Alfred Hitchcock horror film, with Eastwood's very own eerie score to aid the creep factor. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention it's a true story! Writing this review is even disturbing, Clint Eastwood and Universal Pictures will be getting my therapy bills.

Deep breath. Exhale.

Screenwriter, J. Michael Straczynski's script starts out in Los Angeles, CA in March, 1928. We see a middle class working mother, Christine Collins, played by Angelina Jolie in another role that very well may earn her another Oscar nomination, kiss her 9 year old son Walter goodbye as she heads off to work. Upon her return she soon discovers that Walter is nowhere to be found prompting her to file an abduction report with the LAPD. She searches rigorously on her own as she lacks confidence in the LAPD, which has been under public scrutiny for corruption and poor performance. After about 6 months a boy is discovered in DeKalb, Illinois and believed to be Walter and confirmed by the LAPD and it's team of experts that it is, in fact, the Collins boy. The highly anticipated reunion between mother and son quickly turns as Christine instantly realizes that this is not her son despite the assurance from the LAPD, who is clearly trying to make themselves look like heroes, and even the young boy himself seeking love assumes the role as Walter Collins. She reluctantly takes the boy home with her but after numerous things are discovered such as a 3" inch height difference, among other things she begins to push the issue with the LAPD to their utmost disliking, especially considering their public reputation.

As Christine continues to push the envelope with the LAPD they realize they need her to disappear so they throw her in a Psychiatric Hospital to keep her secluded and sedated from the outside world. A local Preacher Rev. Gustav Briegleb, a fiery John Malkovich, takes his message and her story to the airwaves via a local radio station run out of his church in hopes to force the LAPD into revealing her whereabout and anything else they may know.

In the meantime, a terrified boy surfaces and is interrogated by an honest detective, Lester Ybarra (Michael Kelly) and reveals that he has fled the scene of a small ranch outside Winesville, California where he was held against his will and forced to serve as the right hand man of a serial child murderer, Gordon Northcott, creepily played by Jason Butler Harner. Ybarra immediately checks the boys story and and unravels the mystery and unsettling story of what really happened to Walter Collins.