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BY MAGGIE SCOTT

A woman turns to the police for help finding her missing son, only to find that what she has always seen as men with the authority— the experience and the passion to help—have somehow been replaced by men turning a cold shoulder and a deaf ear to her pleas for assistance.

Based on an actual case in the history of the L.A. police department, the chillingly compelling mystery, “Changeling,” from director Clint Eastwood, is not just about the courage of Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), a single, working mother of unremarkable station, but is an indictment of, and warning against, the manipulation of reality backed by the abuse of power.

In 1928, the City of Angels is bedeviled by rogue elements at the highest levels of a department accused by crusaders of corruption, greed, intimidation and brutality. In the face of persistent critical stories in the city’s newspapers, men like Captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) and Chief Davis (Colm Feore) are eager to capitalize on the high public curiosity quotient and potential positive press Christine’s anguished situation represents.

Five months after Walter vanishes, Jones informs Christine they have located her nine-year-old son. Found in the company of a drifter in Illinois, the young man who takes his cap off on the train station platform and rather mechanically throws his arms around the startled Christine might just as well be from the fairies as from this woman who gasps, “It’s not my son.”

Instead of apologies and assurances of resuming the search, Jones insists that after “taking him home on a trial basis” and getting over her shock, Christine will surely recognize this changeling as her son. Although her gut tells her this is some kind of twisted snow job; somehow she senses the wisdom of playing along for the swarming press.

Christine is in shock. But, not because she soon discovers that this child is circumcised, while her’s is not, but rather because the men she thought embodied a commitment to truth and justice are accusing her of shirking her parental duties and jeopardizing her “son’s” welfare.

While Walter’s dentist and school teacher both vow they’ll gladly testify against the imposter, the LAPD’s resistance to her appeals for reason stiffens when Christine makes a public statement about the “mistake” they’ve made. Sensing that she is about to sway public sentiment against them, the department acts to silence her, as it has been silencing hundreds of people who have dared to cross it.

Forcibly held in a psychiatric ward, diagnosed as paranoid and suffering from a “dislocation from reality,” Christine struggles to keep despair at bay and her wits about her in the face of diabolical mind games by the ward’s psychiatrist (Denis O’Hare), who is clearly in league with the police.

Meanwhile, an outraged Presbyterian minister (John Malkovich) and a persistent detective (Michael Kelly), who stumbles on what could be the gruesome answer to what happened to Walter Collins, are on their way to blowing the whistle on the police and giving Christine back her freedom and the chance to carry on the fight to learn the truth.

Eastwood pares the character of Christine down to elemental motherhood galvanized by instincts to fight for her child. Knowing little about her professional life and nothing about her personal life from the narrative, there is nothing to distract or detract from immediate identification and sympathy with Christine.

Jolie is amazingly expressive of this elemental focus, which effectively builds the story’s suspense, until some of its compelling momentum is stalled with a protracted segment about the mental torments suffered by a teenage boy forced to help a serial killer. With exploitation at a minimum, Eastwood has delivered a finely crafted, eloquent moral tale. Rated R for violence, language.

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