Changeling (2008)

This film has been out on DVD for a while now, but I really wanted to take the time to recommend seeing it if you have not already. Not enough can be said for Angelina Jolie's performance as Christine Collins, the mother of missing child, Walter Collins, who actually did disappear in March of 1928 and caused a series of events to unfold that proved that truth can be just as strange as fiction.

Directed by Clint Eastwood, the movie follows the true events quite faithfully, all the while focusing on Angelina's character as she searches for her son with the help of the LAPD. When they bring her son back to her, she is shocked to realize that some evident mistake has been made, and that the boy they present her with is not Walter. The police insist she is wrong, and pressure her into accepting the boy as her own. This acceptance is something that she will rue as the story progresses, and perhaps is something hard for the audience to swallow. We must remember, though, that this really happened! As she begins to insist that the boy is not Walter, and to raise her voice higher and higher in opposition to the mistake made by the LAPD, and their denials of their mistake, they go to greater and greater lengths to dismiss and discredit her.

Women, we must remember, had a much different standing in society in the 1920s than they do today. She was speaking out not only against a powerful organization, but against powerfully ambitious men, who inevitably decided she was not minding her ladylike manners.

After being locked away in an insane asylum by the police, her cause begins to expose the corruption of the LAPD and to ignite a public outcry against it.

Things seem to go from bad to worse at this point, when a serial killer is apprehended after his cousin confesses their crimes due to a heavy conscience. The murders of all those boys that they kidnapped inspire all of the grisly shock onscreen that they must have caused in the 1920s when they were recounted in papers and in the courtrooms of the trial. These scenes no doubt earned the film's R rating, and are not for the faint of heart, but even if crime and horror is not your forte in film, you are guaranteed to be riveted and unable to look away! It's a splendid film, and a fascinating story.

-Dani