ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies

FORTY YEARS ago when Clint Eastwood was the king of the spaghetti westerns, nobody could have predicted that he would become one of America’s most important film directors.

An Eastwood film has almost become a mark of quality in itself. He brings a typically understated style to Changeling, a true story from the 1920s that captures a defining moment in the history of Los Angeles.

Angelina Jolie gives one of her best performance as Christine Collins, a single mother in the Los Angeles of 1928 whose life revolves around her nine year-old son, Walter. When the boy goes missing she is distraught but puts her faith in a police force that everyone else believes to be rotten to the core.

She becomes an inconvenience that will not go away, and so the police eventually win some much needed good press by reuniting her with the missing Walter. The one drawback in this is that the boy in question is not Walter, and Christine Collins is not about to be fobbed off with a stranger no matter how hard the police try to destroy her reputation as a good mother or question her sanity.

Changeling follows such a shocking series of events that you have to keep reminding yourself that it is all true. Christine suffers untold anguish at the hands of authorities that should have been doing everything to help her.

The case became notorious as Christine refused to succumb to their bullying and gradually won vocal backing from the likes of outraged radio preacher the Reverend Gustav Brieglels (John Malkovich).

Ultimately, Changeling develops into a film like Chinatown and L.A. Confidential, where a single case shines a bright light on a key moment in the development of a city.

Jolie is excellent at drawing you into the emotional torment of her character and Eastwood directs with a deliberate pace and intelligence that transforms the melodrama into a compelling slice of good, old-fashioned, no frills storytelling

Nationwide release

Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Jeffrey Donovan, Jason Butler Harner
Screenwriter: J. Michael Straczynski
Certificate: 15
Running time: 142 mins
Country: USA
Year: 2008