Clint Eastwood has become a filmmaker to be reckoned with. Now creeping toward his 80's, with an acting career that spanned over 60 years and a director since "Play Misty for Me" in 1976, he proved that it's possible to please large audiences and still retain admiration from the more selective fans. He does well here again (though he was second choice, when Ron Howard had to give it up) with a daunting subject that takes well over two hours to present.

The plot is from a true story; that helps retain interest as it weaves for 141-minutes in leisurely pace from the late-20s to mid-30s in a Los Angeles rife with top-to-bottom police corruption. A single mother, Christine Collins (Angela Jolie), returns from work one day to discover her 9-year old son has vanished. The police produce what they claim is her youngster; she is thrilled - until she realizes the child is not hers. In confrontation with the police, she is committed to the city's mental ward until she will agree to accept the child as hers. A radio crusading Presbyterian minister (John Malkovich in a blond, wavy toupee) has the mother freed and backs her in the search for her son.

Meanwhile, a parallel action takes place as a serial killer of boys enters the scene; one boy escapes him, to bring many threads of the story together - but not before introducing and delaying one anti-climactic ending after another.

Eastwood, backed by writer J. Michael Sraczynski, obviously intends to stretch the movie in order to carefully detail the solving of the crime - and to fully present the character of the stead-fast, optimistic mother as she proceeds doggedly toward the finding of her son.

The fact that the movie is based solidly on legislative documents (Sraczynski perused LA court and police records for years for accuracy) makes the strange sequence of events believable and stranger than fiction.

Also fascinating are the production values, from Tom Stern's cameras that draw attention to such details as red streetcars clanging down LA's cramped streets to the hair styles, contemporary clothes and make-up - all a bit too fresh, but perfectly, accurately detailed. Well, almost, but the few anachronisms will be caught only by obsessive nit-pickers.

Notable, too, is the control the director commands over the entire cast, especially Angelina Jolie, who is on screen most of the time - her Loretta Young-like features staring out from under the shadow of a cloche hat - a woman whose mundane life shatters into unrelenting grief, suffering, stubborn optimism and undeniable hope. It's as if she, with Eastwood's encouragement, has been groomed for an Oscar - which just might be realized - recalling her iridescent 1999 role in "Girl, Interrupted." (Interesting that Witherspoon and Swank were other contenders for the role.)


The film will not garner a large audience wanting less than two hours in the dark or who resents the sedate pace or detailed moments with a weepy-eyed mother; still, it is a major success for Eastwood, who also composed the gentle piano music and whose insistence on raising the level of screen entertainment beyond Tinsel Town's trite and repetitious mediocrity will make it memorable.