Eastwood's 'Changeling: Something's Missing Here

Before wading into the woeful matter that is "Changeling," may this review acknowledge that Clint Eastwood has been on a roll? Since 1992 (the year of "Unforgiven"), the movies he's directed have received a total of 30 Oscar nominations, winning two for Best Picture, two for Best Director. He's collected countless honors outside the Academy. He is esteemed. Revered. In France, he's known by a single-syllable sobriquet: "Cleeent."

Recently, however, he's started hanging out with the wrong crowd. Eastwood has been renowned for his no-nonsense style of fiscally conservative, story-driven filmmaking, and as a man who sticks to budgets, shooting schedules and the idea of narrative over star power. He wrested the best performance ever out of Kevin Costner in the much-underrated "A Perfect World" (1993) by ignoring the fact that he had a celebrity on his hands.

However: Angelina Jolie's star is apparently so incandescent that it blinded Eastwood to the story mechanics that have made his films so sound. Just as her stoplight lips dominate the poster for "Changeling" -- if one mistook it for a L'Oreal ad, one would be excused -- her outsize persona dwarfs whatever scant drama the movie has to offer. Which is weird, because the story of Jolie's character, Christine Collins, ought to have us riveted to the edge of our seats (if that is, in fact, possible).

It is 1928, and Collins is a Pacific Telephone & Telegraph employee, roller-skating from station to station and helping to remedy the telephonic ills of a fledgling Los Angeles. One day, upon returning home from work, she finds that her young son, Walter (Gattlin Griffith), is gone. Months of fruitless searches go by. Meanwhile, the corrupt Los Angeles Police Department, shining with much of the same luster it enjoys today, is under attack by the Rev. Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), a reformist, radio-broadcasting minister.

One day, after the police get a report that a kid found in DeKalb, Ill., matches young Walter's description, the kid is returned to Collins. Case closed. Public happy.

Except that Christine insists the boy isn't her son. And for this claim, Collins is at first dismissed, then defamed, then committed to an insane asylum. Only the efforts of the cop-baiting Briegleb -- and the fact that young Walter Collins's fate becomes entwined with that of a child serial-killing case east of Los Angeles -- prevents the single mother from disappearing into the medieval labyrinth of LAPD injustice.

Injustice has always been meat to Eastwood (visualize, if you will, the pained grimace with which he regularly confronted craven humanity in all those Dirty Harry movies). "Million Dollar Baby," his boxing/social study of four years ago, was a primer on turning unfairness and thwarted destiny into pure heartbreak. But these were fictions. "Changeling" bears the burden of "based on a true story" -- words that can excuse implausibility in a script, but can also hamstring the filmmaker.

Movie reviews that presume to rewrite the movie at hand are an annoyance, but it has to be said that what's MIA in "Changeling" is something to prevent it from becoming penal-system porn: Yes, Christine Collins fits tongue-and-groove into Jolie's public persona of feminism, activism and philanthropic motherhood; her suffering at the hands of LAPD Capt. J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan), who is trying to stanch the damage to his department that Briegleb's radio broadcasts have done, creates a great deal of righteous indignation. But far too little intrigue.

Jones, in creating more problems for the department than he can possibly prevent by making Collins go away, shows his stupidity, and stupid characters aren't interesting. (Donovan, usually pretty capable, is simply awful.) Neither is the situation involving Christine and the alleged Walter (Devon Conti). At no time does the audience wonder if this might actually be Walter. The new Walter is shorter; the new Walter is circumcised, while his predecessor was not. No one, from Jones to Police Chief James E. Davis (Colm Feore) to an infamous police doctor (Peter Gerety), who claims that trauma has likely shrunk Walter's spine, makes a plausible argument that Walter isn't still out there, missing. Despite a mysterious title, "Changeling" isn't a mystery.

Christine is treated like dirt, her motherhood besmeared and besmirched; she gets a naked power-hosing in the psychiatric prison, is cold, hungry, force-fed, force-drugged. The body-cavity search she undergoes is excruciating and, again, borders on the pornographic, sadistic and emotionally cheap.

Jolie gets to do all the messy scenes that Oscar voters suck up like oysters at a free buffet. The "Snake Pit"-style insanity stuff, the noble-mother stuff -- she explains to Walter early on that on the day Walter was born, his father received a box containing "responsibility," and that Dad chose not to open it. J. Michael Straczynski's script is full of such nuggets, as well as about six endings to the story. These include a confrontation with serial killer Gordon Northcott (a terrific Jason Butler Harner, who really is Oscar-worthy) in which Eastwood imposes no directorial restraint and Jolie shows that "A Mighty Heart" was just a warm-up in the histrionics marathon.

"Changeling" is graced by some nice period detail, an ethereal diffusion of light bestowed by first-rate cinematographer Tom Stern (an Eastwood regular) and a portrait of Los Angeles that's part Chaplin and part "Chinatown." The musical motif Eastwood has composed for the film wears out its welcome by about Act 2. Jolie's look -- a rather ghastly white, behind a mouth that looks like two parked fire engines -- is distracting, which may be what Eastwood had in mind. "Changeling" is a totally star-driven vehicle in which you find yourself missing something very essential. Something very Cleeent.

Changeling (140 minutes, at area theaters) is rated R for some violent and disturbing content, and for language.