Quick Review: "Changling"

When I was a boy, I would watch the reruns of "Dragnet," leading me to think the Los Angeles Police Department was the most by-the-book, professional police department ever. The department would repay Jack Webb by lowering its flag at half-mast when he died. Yeah, they owed him big time, because history has now taught me that the department has had problems long before Rodney King.

Director Clint Eastwood cements his reputation further on this movie, now on DVD, by revisiting a sensational case that exposed how corrupt and above-the-law the department was in the 1920s. Angelina Jolie puts in a marvelous performance (as does everyone in this movie) as the real-life mother of a boy who went missing in 1928. When the police, eager for good publicity, announced they had found the boy, she was horrified to learn it was not her boy -- and even more horrified to find out the police not only wanted it behind them, but would stoop to playing mind games with her to pretend it was her boy and that the mother was crazy -- and I mean literally crazy. It is a story with so many twists and turns I don't dare reveal more, but it certainly is safe to say this was an historic case with major ramifications for the police department. It is a great movie that grips you with its story and holds you in suspense, tears and astonishment to the end, with every detail handled expertly.

In this day of Amber Alerts and media concentration, parents will be horrified to find out what happened to this mother and this child. One will be stunned how, in the United States of America, we can discover how authority, when too eager to get good publicity and easy rides at the risk of actually doing a good cop's job, can stoop to Gestapo-like tactics to get their way. It is a morality lesson for us all, and one every law enforcement agency, every military and every citizen's action group in these post-9/11 days should all but force their ranks to watch. Action in the sake of cleaning up society can soon spiral out of control be at the expense of a free society only wanting the basics done, such as finding a missing child. It happened in the "good ol' days" of 1928, in California, in an age of front porches and trust. Heaven help us what could happen today, and "Changeling" is our warning bell in the night.