Delayed Reaction: Changeling

The Pitch: A mother in the 1920s with a kidnapped son battles the LAPD when they refuse to admit that they brought back the wrong kidnapped boy and pretended he was her son.

Changeling is several movies. It's the story of a woman trying to find her missing son. It's the story of a woman trying to expose an LAPD cover-up when they bring back the wrong boy and pretend he's her son. It's also about the investigation of a serial killer. As a result, the movie is too long and doesn't know where to end. I'm not sure if that's a consequence of the script or if no one knows how to tell Clint Eastwood "No". The up and down pacing of the story plus the time period it's set in reminded me a lot of The Shawshank Redemption, but that movie is an outlier in almost every way. It shouldn't work but it does. Changeling is more of an example of how structuring a movie like this normally goes. By the end of the movie, I just wanted them to settle on a stopping point. The LAPD cover-up which is how the movie was sold had been over for a while. The cover-up was exposed. The trial had concluded. The son's probable murderer had been killed. They kept finding excuses to not end. That got fatiguing.

The movie is fine though. I needed an Angelina Jolie fix and got one. The production design looks good. I like the 1920s/30s aesthetic and always appreciate it being done well in a movie. In the earlier parts, Eastwood does a great job showing how helpless Jolie's character was to fight the LAPD, due to the nature of their position vs. her standing as a single mother in the 1920s. So, yeah. I like it. I just needed less of it.

Some other thoughts that have no value but I still wanted to bring up:

-The main note I made while watching this movie was "Man-splaining: The Movie" and I don't think that's inaccurate.

-I think I need a new section in all these PG-13 movie Reactions for spotting the "Fuck". As I like to point out often, one of the quirks of the MPAA rating system is that, traditionally, PG-13 movies are allowed to use "fuck" one time. So, the game within the movie become about seeing how each movie burns it off. In the case of Changeling, it was an excellent use. I forgot who she was talking to (probably Jeffrey Donovan), but at some point, Angelina Jolie tells some cop or detective "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on". That's a terrific line!

-This is the most minute of points, but I couldn't resist. Jolie's character makes a bet with a co-worker about who would win the Academy Award for best picture. They paint it as Cleopatra being the favorite and It Happened One Night (the eventual winner) as the underdog. So, I looked it up. Both films were tied for 2nd most nominations that year. Cleopatra's were for more technical awards. It Happened One Night was nominated for the "Big Five" awards (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay) and is one of only three films ever to win all five of those awards. Look, I wasn't there at the time, so I don't know what public sentiment was. However, I think this movie gave the wrong impression about the 1935 Oscar race.

-Finally, I'm not the only one who didn't remember what the son looked like at all by the time the fake son was found, right?

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend