Changeling (2008)

Directed by Clint Eastwood. Starring Angelina Jolie, Jeffrey Donovan, John Malkovich, Michael Kelly, Colm Feore, Eddie Alderson, Amy Ryan, Jason Butler Harner, Dennis O’Hare, Geoff Pierson, Peter Gerety, Frank Wood. (R)

Bleak, frustrating melodrama based on real people and incidents designed to be as harrowing and horrific as possible. Single mom Jolie’s son disappears in Los Angeles during the late-20s only to be found and returned to her several months later, but Jolie insists that it’s not her child and fights back against the corrupt LAPD that won’t listen to her, leading to her being committed to a psych ward against her will. It’s a story that doesn’t know when to quit (or at least know when to hold back on those repeated dramatic crescendos), with Eastwood illustrating every outrage against the one-dimensionally evil patriarchal establishment—noble, but incessant. The grim yet glossy material is moving and upsetting in short phrases, but the contrivances and manipulation are impossible to ignore, resulting in a whiplash effect between righteous indignation and disheartened disillusion. There’s virtually no grey area to find—nearly everyone is either a sadistically arrogant villain or an angel waiting to be handed their halo—and without the nuance needed to understand how these situations played out and were allowed to exist in the first place, it just feels like a lot of string-plucking (or hammering).

49/100