This is a very nice review for Jeffrey Donovan and Jason Butler Harner, who I didn't realize grew up in Virginia and attended Virginia Commonwealth University (he was a visiting teacher for the theatre department for the 2007-2008 academic year). Pretty cool... Anyway - it's a bit lengthy, but a good read. How can you go wrong with a review that ends with, "thank Clint Eastwood for casting James Butler Harner and Jeffrey Donovan"?
The missing monsters of 'Changeling'Posted by Bill Iddings | The Muskegon Chronicle November 09, 2008 11:00AM
Categories: Extra Iddings
The names Jason Butler Harner and Jeffrey Donovan don't mean much to most.
Learn them. Attention must be paid, out of respect and admiration, and a sense of self-defense.
Judging by how well Harner and Donovan embody two monsters lurking in the shadows of "Changeling," you might want to think twice before allowing either actor to get behind you.
That's assuming, of course, you have your guard up because you've seen "Changeling."
Director Clint Eastwood's new, true-crime film — about a despicable 1920s-1930s incident in Los Angeles — stole into town this Halloween, unannounced.
The Muskegon Chronicle neither wrote about nor reviewed the film, which is about a kidnapping that blew the lid off corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department.
No local presenters told us "Changeling" was coming.
We were never offered a chance to see "Changeling" in advance, something we require because our reviews of new movies are published only on the day the films open.
Trailers promoting "Changeling" concentrate on Angelina Jolie, an Academy Award-winning actress jockeying for another Oscar nomination.
Playing a working mother whose only child is kidnapped, Jolie leads with swollen lips so caked in red that they look like the waxed-candy ones sold in novelty shops.
Jolie's Christine Collins comes home from work one day to discover her 9-year-old son missing.
The crime leads to a cover-up — the cops return an impostor even though the mother, a teacher and a doctor know full well he's not the right kid.
Angelina Jolie portrays Christine Collins, the mother of a missing 9-year-old boy.
Jeffrey Donovan portrays corrupt police Capt. J.J. Jones.
John Malkovich portrays the Rev. Gustav Briegleb.
Jolie fights city hall. For her trouble, she gets vilified, defamed and thrown into a mental institution.
The travail causes Jolie to spring a leak. She sheds so many tears and other moistness that you want to hose her down. If she accepts any statuettes in this condition, expect a sticky situation.
As he was creating such movies as "Mystic River" and "Million Dollar Baby," "Changeling" again finds Eastwood walking on the dark side.
Although John Malkovich as a muckraking evangelist carries the faint aroma of ham, the director has guided great performances across the "Changeling" board:
• Amy Ryan, so riveting as a neglectful mother in Ben Affleck's "Gone Baby Gone," plays a prostitute who befriends and sacrifices for Jolie.
• Michael Kelly (he was FBI Agent Goddard on the pay-television series "The Sopranos") as a police subordinate who unearths the horror buried under the surface.
• Devon Conti as a lost boy who should have stayed gone.
• Frank Wood, a 1999 Tony Award winner on Broadway for "Side Man," as Jolie's sympathetic superior at the phone company.
• And especially young Eddie Anderson has a forced accomplice who gives a harrowing confession, superb work beyond his age.
Now come the demons, real-life evil to make the flesh crawl.
Gordon Northcott and Capt. J.J. Jones existed.
The first was a serial killer who preyed on boys.
The second was a bad cop who helped head a department that was little more than an assassination squad on the take.
As Northcott, James Butler Harner is so creepy — a giggling study in mental unbalance down to its final nerve — that you fear for your safety even while he is being led, his hands bound behind his back, up the 13 steps of the gallows from which he is hanged. The air is thicky with irony (and forced symbolism) as, from beneath a black hood, he sings "Silent Night," and the door drops as he gets to the lyric "mother and child."
Just as bad — meaning good — is Jeffrey Donovan as the incarnation of absolute power corrupting absolutely. His smile is cold, and does not extend to his eyes. Anyone who crosses his department is doomed to torment. Who's going to stop him?
In real life, someone did. Christine Collins stood up to the cops, suffered, but ultimately prevailed.
What she never found was her son. But because she and others never abandoned their resolve, never gave up, two monsters were slain, one in death, the other in shame.
Thank God they're gone, and thank Clint Eastwood for casting James Butler Harner and Jeffrey Donovan.
These you gotta see.
I can erase that guy's review from our view if you like, actually. *nodding earnestly* You know...actually, I thought he was being kind of complimentary in a back-handed sort of way - he was basically saying that he'd enjoyed watching season 1 of Burn Notice and then came Cannes, where he saw Changeling and thought he was spot-on in his role as the police captain and that he couldn't shake the image. Now - I myself just got back from having seen Changeling, and in NO WAY did I leave thinking, "I'll never look at Jeffrey Donovan the same way again!" I thought he was marvelous (more on that shortly). 
) - these are the scenes I liked the most with him:
I guess I will need stadium seating to go see it so I can hopefully sneak in a double feature of it. 
I doubt it since they clean the theaters after every showing...
)...
