Changeling (Clint Eastwood, 2008)



Synopsis
Changeling is the recent provocative drama from Clint Eastwood. It starts off with Christine Collins spending time with her little boy, and showing her work. She promises to take him to a movie, but instead she’s called into work and has to work a couple of hours. But when she gets home from her shift at work she finds that her little boy has gone missing. Months pass and her little boy has still not been found, she doesn’t stop looking for him though. Then one day the LAPD say they found him and give him to her. But this little boy is not her little boy, and the LAPD won’t listen to her, so she has to find help from someone else. So Reverend Gustav Briegleb steps in to help her out, because he’s dealt with the LAPD before. The two of them begin fighting this so that Christine can get her son back. But once she decides to go public about this, Captain J.J. Jones doesn’t like it and throws her in an insane asylum. While this is all happening though, Detective Lester Ybarra finds a boy that’s confessed to something that leads to some big events. Gustav then gets Christine out of the asylum and with the help of the best Lawyer in town; they plan to sue the city. Christine still has hope that she can get her son back though. Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Michael Kelly, Jeffery Donovan, and Jason Butler Harner all star in this great drama.

Acting/Characters
The acting in this is very strong from the entire cast. Angelina Jolie stood out the most out of the cast, but that’s already sort of a given because she’s the main star of the movie and is in more of the movie than anyone. I’d be surprised if she didn’t at least get a ‘Best Actress’ nomination at the academy awards this year, I could definitely see her winning though, I still have a few more movies that seem to be getting academy awards buzz though, so I may find someone better. John Malkovich was amazing in this, that’s really the only way to describe. He definitely deserves ‘Best Actor’ I don’t see him winning though, because I’ve seen some better performances this year so far. His character was my favorite character in the movie though; the way he talked was just so powerful that it actually made me smile with what he was doing. Michael Kelly was also great; he was probably my favorite character after Malkovich and Jolie. Just because he was one of the only cops actually trying to do the right thing, he wasn’t corrupt like the rest of the LAPD was. I hated Jeffery Donovan’s character, his acting in it was pretty good, but I just really hated his character. Jason Butler Harner was great, I was surprised because I’ve never seen him in a movie before, but he was amazing in this. Hopefully he can do this great in some more movies.

Plot
The story right from the very first scene was great, I didn’t get bored one bit, I couldn’t even go to the bathroom during it because I was just so into it. I do feel that it could’ve ended like 25 minutes before it actually ended, I didn’t hate the last 25 minutes or anything, I just felt some of it was unneeded. But the last 10 minutes were great, I was really happy that it explained what happened. For the most part though, the movie was intense because you wanted to see what happened next, and it kept delivering on what happened next. I really wasn’t disappointed by this once, every scene was great and what I had expected from a movie directed by Clint Eastwood.



My Thoughts On It
Overall I loved it; it really did deliver on my expectations for it being a Clint Eastwood movie. Once again, I think this is probably tied with Benjamin Button and Revolutionary Road as my favorite of the year, but as I said earlier in this review, I still have a few movies from 2008 to see, and I still haven’t watched my second most hyped movie for 2008 yet. Clint Eastwood has made another amazing movie and any fan of Clint Eastwood I’m sure would like this. This movie wasn’t really disappointing at all, except maybe the ending, which if it is it’s just a little bit. And if you have any interest in seeing this, then I’d highly suggest you do so, because it definitely lives up to expectations that you might have for Changeling.