Jamie passion and passionfruit!

Clint Eastwood back again with Angelina Jolie as the mother of a child who goes missing and who is ‘replaced’ by the LA Police Department with a false child rather than work harder at finding children.  She sets off trying to find out the truth and is put in a mental hospital.  This is the late 1920’s, of course but some of the high-handed police and governmental behaviour still goes on 80 years later.  This is a careful but almost too slow recreation of the times. You feel so safe with Clint and confident that he will tell the story well here but although he tones down the obvious outrage at the police’s behaviour, the film also suffers from some pretty one-sided charcterisations and an almost overloaded extension of plot and genre.  Just when you think things are getting sorted, a plot twist emerges and you are off on another twenty minute storyline.

Well, Angelina is suitably restrained for the most part, almost insignifiacne but turns on a rant and some hysteria when needed. Malkovich and other leading actors are low-key and only Jason Butler Harman, a newcomer to me, does a more memorable turn as a serial killer.  I enjoyed and respect this film by Clint but it is a little soulless and he has done better.  His own music is suitably poignant, the photography is in order but I still needed more to care about the characters and story, however real it was.  Angelina was Oscar nominated and she is good but by no means is it a superb performance.

* * * +