Clint Eastwood is too experienced a filmmaker to overlook little details that make a film big. And he knows that authenticity is important when dealing with a big screen production, especially if the particular movie is based on a true story. In fact, “Changeling” is a true story, we are warned in the beginning.

The film opens in 1928 Los Angeles with gutsy single mother Christine Collins, played by an outstanding Angelina Jolie, and her 9-year-old son Walter (Gattlin Griffith) taking a red trolley car, as the kid has to get to school and his mom is on her way to work.

One day, Christine gets home to find that Walter is missing. Confronting her worst nightmare, she desperately turns to the Los Angeles Police Department. Nevertheless, the officials offer her a discouraging answer, since they take the problem as a casual disappearance, an approach which will prove to be only a bitter foretaste of a following shoddier attitude.

Some time passes, but Christine won’t give up on her son. When Capt. J.J. Jones, played by Jeffrey Donovan, reunites the frantic mother with her supposed son in a scene meant to capture the spotlight, Christine realizes that she has never seen the boy before and refuses to pretend that he is her child.

“Changeling” focuses too much on the performances of the actors and structure of the plot, that it leaves humanity way behind. The film may be brilliantly built, but it is deficient in sympathy and compassion. And while Angelina Jolie’s beautiful face and flawless lips warm the cold facts, a less tense atmosphere would have been more appropriate.