The Changeling

Everybody from the Hospitality Exchange Movie Monday group who attended this movie agreed on one thing: It was a well-crafted story with good actors. Some felt however that the way the story was developed, lacked some drive. It is true that Clint Eastwood who directed this movie created a distance between the movie and the audience, and in the end there was no possibility for interaction with the characters.

Yes, we all sympathized with Angelina Jolie who lost her child, and her acting was very convincing, but the movie never left the routine and didn't try to inject some new blood in the "Missing"-style movie.

A good movie, sure, but nothing exceptional. And after great Eastwood movies like "Million Dollar Baby", "Mystic River" and "A Perfect World", we were hoping for something better.

Quote from Changeling:

Christine Collins: He's not my son.
Capt. J.J. Jones: Mrs. Collins...
Christine Collins: No, I don't know why he's saying that he is, but he's not Walter and there's been a mistake.
Capt. J.J. Jones: I thought we agreed to give him time to adjust.
Christine Collins: He's three inches shorter; I measured him on the chart.
Capt. J.J. Jones: Well, maybe your measurements are off. Look, I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for all of this.
Christine Collins: He's circumcised and Walter isn't.
Capt. J.J. Jones: Mrs. Collins, your son was missing for five months, for at least part of that time in the company of an unidentified drifter. Who knows what such a disturbed individual might have done. He could have had him circumcised. He could have...
Christine Collins: ...made him shorter?

Inspired by actual events that occurred in 1920s-era Los Angeles, Clint Eastwood's "Changeling" tells the story of a woman driven to confront a corrupted LAPD after her abducted son is retrieved and she begins to suspect that the boy returned to her is not the same boy she gave birth to.