Changling is excellent, really, except for Angelina Jolie who is awful. Well, at least I didn't like her. Way too wooden, too much red lipstick and dark eye make-up and too many meaningful sighs and poses. But don't let her performance put you off this film. It is excellent, gripping and quite tragic. It is based on a true story, but loosely. It takes place in L.A. from 1928-1935. Evidently the L.A. Police were very corrupt and very brutal (what has changed?).

Jolie plays Christine Collins, a single mother with a nine year old son. He disappears. A few months later, L.A. Police say they have found her son (a kid from the mid-West) and turn him over to her at a big press event at the train station. She says he is not her son but agrees to take him home for a few days. The kid is 3 inches shorter than her son, is circumcised (her son was not) and his teacher and dentist say this is not Christine's kid.

LA Police captain in charge of the case has Christine forcibly committed to the LA city psychiatric hospital (where the police have been committing women for years who disagreed with them or reported their misdeeds) when she insists on the police looking for her real son. A radio preacher who has been fighting to expose LA Police corruption for years takes on her case. Soon the entire city seems to be on her side (and much of the country).

Very good expose of powerlessness of women, especially earlier in the 20th century. Some brutality (as we find out what really happened to her son and 19 other boys) and violence. but very little by today's Hollywood standards.

See Changling and just bear with Jolie's performance and red lips as other performances and the script are very very good.