saw: changeling
Director Clint Eastwood brings his trademark "spare" (gloomy) style to a period melodrama that, superficial similarities to the likes of L.A. Confidential aside, actually has more in common in its execution with supernatural horror than deco noir. The almost unspeakably gruesome crime spree that haunts the film also threatens, at times, to derail it—but a strong supporting cast keeps the proceedings rooted in the human dimension. In the lead role Angelina Jolie certainly looks the part: a doe-eyed, cloche-hatted Edward Hopper subject sprung lusciously to life; and the actress does what she emotionally can with the material; but it's a curiously subdued embodiment, dramatized along the periphery of major events—the character floating diffusely through the admittedly convoluted, if gripping, story—reacting here or there but never quite seeming fully motivated, realized or alive. The apparition at the center of Changeling may be a missing child, or his doppelgänger, but it's the heroine who's the ghost. And maybe that's the idea. Grade: B