Eastwood's revenge

In Changeling Clint gives fans humorless melodrama | Sam Thielman

Universal Pictures

All of the things that make Clint Eastwood's recent movies so interesting are in his new movie Changeling—ruined childhood, revenge, unbreakable courage—but he's excised his usual insights to play second fiddle to his lead actress. It's a large step backward for an excellent director.

Changeling, the story of a telephone operator named Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) whose young son vanishes in 1928, is the most shameless gimme-an-Oscar movie in years. It's an utterly humorless melodrama in which terrible things are done to children, but the real martyr is Collins, whom we see suffering majestically at every turn. It's hard to blame Jolie for all of this—the performance is a modest one, with the actress hiding under her cloche hat as she's browbeaten by unsympathetic cops and a truly monstrous doctor (played well by Denis O'Hare) who oversees Christine when she's committed to the nuthouse.