I'm the Changeling See Me Change

As the snow tumbled out of a Sunday afternoon Brussels sky, I thought I'd take advantage of the unclement weather and see a movie. A short trudge from my breakfast pit stop at O'Reilly's to de Brouckere later and I sat myself down to watch Changeling, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Angelina Jolie. I've always been a great admirer of Clint, both as an actor, in films like the Good the Bad and the Ugly as a purveyor of fine foods, the Dirty Harry burger I ate in his Hogsbreath restaurant in Carmel was awesome. Changeling shows, yet again, that he's also one of the finest directors in the world.

Like Billion Dollar Baby before it it's a bittersweet roller coaster of the emotions, but I think overall is uplifting. Jolie plays a mother, Christine Collins, who's son go's missing and is found by the police. The only problem is that the returnee foisted on her by the police is not her boy. What follows is a nightmare journey to the heart of 1920's Los Angeles, a world of corruption, incompetence and a callus disregard for humanity. Sitting at the heart of this empire of evil the LAPD, a cross between the keystone cops and the mob. To match this mood, as with many of Clint's movies, the lighting is as dark as the subject matter.

A couple of Babylon 5 tie ins to mention, Changeling was written by B5 creator J Michael Straczynski, twice in the film Jolie's character says "Never start a fight, always finish it." a quote John Sheridan said his father always told him.

Straczynski based his screenplay on a true story, the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders and much of it was taken from actual transcripts of this case. It took him only 11 days to produce the first draft and this remained virtually unchanged to the end. Nice to know JMS hasn't lost the knack of producing top quality material in a short time, a thing he regularly did wit Bab 5. Eastwood agreed to direct after reading it.

At one point in the film Jolie's character places a bet on the movie "It happened One Night" to win an Oscar ahead of the more fancied Cleopatra. I think there may be some smart money in the real world placed on Eastwood's latest opus for next years awards and on this performance I wouldn't be surprised to see one of the little silver dudes clenched on Ms Jolie's tight grasp come the awards.