Angelina Jolie is a TERRIBLE Actress

Desperate and grasping. Yeah, that's how I'd describe Angelina Jolie's performance in Changeling. Which is really too bad, because you would think someone who's been around as long as Clint Eastwood would have either gotten a better performance out of her or hired a better actress. I guess it proves that thing people say about not being able to squeeze blood from a stone.

I think the problem with this movie, other than Jolie's performance (and her emaciated frame making her not only look like she's in her late 40s rather than early 30s, but causing her to bear an eerie resemblance to a La Catrina figure [see below]), is that the story isn't a story American audiences enjoy. On the one hand, it's based on the true story of Christine Collins, a woman whose son disappears and is given a replacement son by the LAPD, who go out of their way to prove she's crazy when she insists the boy isn't her son. They even institutionalize her. The story becomes intertwined with the story of a boy the cops find living on a farm who claims to have been forced to be an accessory to kidnapping and killing dozens of other little boys.

I wanted this story to be more of a mystery. Is the boy really not Walter Collins? Is Christine really insane? But, it's clear from the start that the boy isn't Walter, and Christine is just a desperate mother trying to find her child. And yet, Jolie's over-the-top hysterics make her more ridiculous than believable in the film. The desperation in her acting doesn't translate into a desperate desire for someone to listen to her and find her son, but more a desperate begging for some talent. Or a sandwich.

On the other hand, audiences would have been far more interested in a gruesome horror story about the farm on which the dead bodies were found. Showing the little boy being held captive go through stages of terror, maybe crying and vomiting the first time the predatory killer makes him chop up another little boy, and then finally the cops discovering the operation.

The worst part of the film is that the whole thing builds towards learning what happened to Walter Collins, and you never do. You find out that, since it was before DNA testing was available, none of the remains at the farm could definitively be identified as Walter. While the cops think it's reasonable to believe the boy was probably among the dead, Christine Collins never accepted that assessment and never stopped looking for her son.

So, what we end up with is a story that should be compelling but isn't and provides no real resolution, an actress who can't act, and a director who should have known better. If you're thinking of renting Changeling, I suggesting changing your mind.