Few corruption cases have been as baffling as the one presented in Clint Eastwood’s film, Changeling. What went through the minds of those L.A. police officers who were so blindsided with boosting their public image that they tried to fool a mother that a completely different boy is her long-missing son? Despite the all too obvious and overwhelming evidence of this new child not matching her son’s, the police department refused to listen and skirted every which way to only cover their public image. When she was about to go public with her plight, they locked her up in a mental asylum and threw away the key so that no one would listen to her.
Clint Eastwood’s latest is based on these true but somewhat forgotten events in the late 1920s to 1930s. As a director who has grown more ambitious and prolific with age, he also seems ever more deliberate to place a photo-negative on the various action roles he played as an actor in the past. I am actually surprised he waited this long to dramatize a real-life case as a representation of the kind of police corruption that Dirty Harry Callahan would certainly have understood and been further disgruntled with.
The movie stars Angelina Jolie as the mother, Christine Collins, a telephone operator and single mother to nine-year-old Walter (Gattlin Griffith). One afternoon in March 1928, coming home after filling in for another employee at work, she finds that her son has disappeared. She frantically calls the police only to be told that their policy is that they do not consider a boy missing until after 24 hours. Days and months pass, as various people around her pray for his safe return, including Reverend Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), who makes radio broadcasts criticizing and condemning the corrupt deeds of the Los Angeles police department. Then, news arrives that her son has been found in Illinois and will be brought back by Captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan).
When she sees the boy at the train station, however, she immediately sees that this boy (Devon Conti) they have brought back is not her son. Jones assures her this is really him, as the boy recalls the Collins home address. She reluctantly takes him home until she sees the aforementioned sign of this boy being a full three inches shorter. When she goes to confront Jones about this and how they are wasting precious time to look for her real son, he snidely accuses her of avoiding returning to her motherly responsibilities. Even when a psychiatrist comes over, he only harasses her, saying that this is indeed Walter after providing a phony explanation for the height difference.
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