: Changeling
Director: Clint Eastwood
This film is based on a true story about a woman in the 1920s fighting corruption in the L.A. police department. Her son is disappears and the police return a different boy to her and try to convince her that he’s really her son — to the point of throwing her in the looney bin to shut her up. But she does not keep quiet and eventually brings change to the department. It’s a good story, well-told, but the there’s something of a let-down about the way that it is presented. It’s bit too long, and while there’s seemingly a mystery about why the police would do such a bizarre thing, there really isn’t much of a mystery: it’s just a mistake and over-enthusiasm by the authorities to have a success and when they find a boy who claims to be the the woman’s son, they take him at his word and later are too proud to retract because that would be embarrassing. Unfortunately, the film’s also a bit of a downer, as the real boy’s fate is left ambiguous, with the mother never really finding out — for sure — what happened to him (though it seems likely he is dead). That’s real life, but it makes for a depressing movie. All-in-all, good but not great, and not nearly as intriguing as you might think. Horrible title, too.
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