Something more than a child goes missing in Clint Eastwood's "Changeling," his tale casting Angelina Jolie as a real-life single mom whose young son vanishes in 1928.

On the surface, "Changeling" has all the rich atmosphere and evocative detail of his recent Academy Awards offerings, "Mystic River," "Million Dollar Baby" and "Letters From Iwo Jima."

Yet it lacks the emotional depth and nuance of that string of films marking Eastwood's late-career resurgence. Instead, "Changeling" slips back toward the workmanlike storytelling of his decade between "Unforgiven" and "Mystic River" -- sturdily made movies that ranged from passably engaging to completely forgettable, and mostly hollow at heart.

With his first foray into heavyweight drama, TV writer J. Michael Straczynski (creator of the sci-fi series "Babylon 5") crafts a meticulous screenplay centered on the case of Christine Collins, who became a victim of nightmarish persecution by corrupt Los Angeles police handling the case of her vanished boy. As the story grows bigger and more horrific, Eastwood and Straczynski lose focus, their sharp portrait swallowed by a scattered, one-note melodrama.

Jolie's Christine is an angelic figure, a woman making a safe and comfortable life on her own for herself and 9-year-old son Walter.

One day, Christine returns home from her job supervising telephone operators to discover that Walter is gone. Five agonizing months pass without a clue, and then police notify Christine that her son has been found.

Amid a media circus, police Capt. J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) presents a boy that Christine insists is not Walter. The unctuous Jones convinces her to take him home anyway to try him out and see if perhaps, given her emotional distress, her own memory had failed.

With help from a social activist and radio preacher (John Malkovich), Christine mounts a crusade against the monolithic police department, whose thugs and scoundrels brand her an unfit mother trying to duck out on her obligations.

From there, "Changeling" broadens into horror stories running on separate but parallel tracks, city officials going so far as to lock Christine up in a savage nuthouse, while clues to Walter's fate turn up on the chicken ranch of a serial killer who slaughtered children with an ax.

"Changeling" is a fine piece of technical craftsmanship, loaded with period flourishes that make L.A. in its early decades come alive. Yet it all just seems like window-dressing for Jolie's best-actress clip at the Oscars. There's nothing wrong with old-fashioned storytelling that clearly delineates good and evil, but "Changeling" comes off as a great expenditure of cinematic prowess in service of simplistic drama.

- By David Germain / Associated Press

Changeling

Rating: 2 stars (out of four)

Cast: Angelina Jolie, Jeffrey Donovan, John Malkovich.

Running time: 141 minutes.

Rated: R; language and some violent and disturbing content.