ViewGuide

Created Nov 06, 2008 05:02PM PST • Edited Jul 09, 2015 01:14AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Polish up the acceptance speeches. Changeling deserves a passel of trophies, though Best Picture isn’t one of them. The difficult story – while expertly told – ends up a mildly exhausting slog, one not worth enduring for anyone not wanting to visualize the most elemental of maternal nightmares. The fact that it is a true story makes it all the more chilling.

   Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the entire production is that Clint (does he need a last name?) has delivered another in a string of first-rate movies. In how many fields of endeavor does someone rise to the apex in two disciplines? Superstar athletes don’t become champion coaches, nor do superstar actors become equally esteemed as directors. Hell, Clint even wrote the music for Changeling. The guy is a triple threat.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Hail Angelina, Mother-of-the-Year on screen and off! In a Best Actress quality performance, she ably plays a strong mother going through the most trying of ordeals, in similar fashion to the strong wife she played in A Mighty Heart.

   Clint has said he wanted her for the part because her looks fit the movie’s interwar period yet also look contemporary. He emphasizes this by painting her Jagger lips bright red, while toning down the rest of her face under pancake makeup, framing it all inside a tight hat. Her lips aglow like a mother’s loving heart, the effect is continually startling.

   John Malkovich delivers one of his patented oily operator performances, here as a crusading minister whose motives we question simply because he’s played by Malkovich.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Expertly mounted, the movie wends its way through the byzantine story in a way that maximizes the mystery, while placing it in a sepia toned 1920s Los Angeles.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

    Blood Work, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, and now Changeling: What other director has had a better decade than the High Plains Drifter? Its gotten to the point that if a movie is directed by Eastwood, you just have to see it.

12. Play Great 4.0

    While expertly delivered, the repetitive plaints of “WHERE’S MY SON??!!!” are increasingly tough on the ears.

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    The movie recreates 1920s and 30s LA, Vancouver and even San Quentin in strikingly realistic form. The wide shots of a pastoral LA are stunning. The movie’s sepia toned color scheme, broken only by shots of color such as Angelina’s lips, dim the California sunniness to a level that Sam Spade would appreciate.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.4

    Serious violence against boys, mostly implied but chillingly so. Also a realistic hanging adds to the story, but might be too much for delicate constitutions.

17. Sex Innocent 1.0

18. Violence Savage 4.0

19. Rudeness Salty 2.1

21. Reality

    Glib 1.1

    The movie appears to be remarkably true to the Christine and Walter Collins story. Spoiler Alert The fact that this innocent mother and son were doubly victimized – first by a crime-of-the-century serial killer, then by an incompetent and bullying police department – seems like it could only happen in the movies.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.3

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0