Angelina Jolie cries so much in Changeling, you'd think the world had no more orphans to adopt.

Okay, so maybe not, but this illustrates one of the challenges for Clint Eastwood's flawed but fiery period melodrama: namely, separating persona from performance despite the hyper-celebrity of his star.

Fortunately for all involved -- including audiences -- Jolie, infused with anger and anguish, is up to the task. She is never less than convincing slipping into the cloche and shapeless garments of Christine Collins, a single mother living in 1928 Los Angeles whose nine-year-old son Walter goes missing.

If this wasn't shattering enough, when the police announce five months later they've found her boy in Illinois, she suffers another cruel twist: the child they've brought back is not Walter. He's an imposter, a Prohibition-era omen bent on insinuating himself into her life.

Yet when she voices her belief to the captain in charge (Jeffrey Donovan), she's stifled. "Try him out," she's told. (The title obscurely refers to a European myth in which a human infant is replaced by a fairy child.)

Soon Christine's bone-deep suspicion gives way to undeniable evidence: the boy is inches shorter than Walter, his dental records conflict and he's circumcised (Walter wasn't).

Yet for all the irrefutable proof, the LAPD -- painted as corrupt, incompetent and brutal -- digs in. To admit their error would be too grievous an embarrassment for its chief (Colm Feore).

When Christine goes to the press -- at the suggestion of crusading Reverend Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich) -- she's locked up in a mental institution.

Here is a plot that would be too preposterous to believe if it hadn't really happened.

It's familiar terrain for Eastwood, who has grappled with such themes before: the loss of childhood innocence (A Perfect World), feminism (Million Dollar Baby), life-bending grief and injustice (Mystic River).

So it's a shame -- and a surprise -- he and scribe J. Michael Straczynski (whose meticulous screenplay is rich in detail but slight on nuance) let the story splinter into competing subplots.

In the psycho ward, there are traces of Girl Interrupted with Christine befriended by another wrongly institutionalized woman (Amy Ryan). And we creep into horror-thriller territory with the introduction of Gordon Northcott (Jason Butler Harner), a wormy child serial killer. Was Walter one of his victims?

Political protests, police malfeasance worthy of L.A. Confidential, a mother's grief, a depraved serial killer, two courtroom trials -- it's a lot for the usually lean Eastwood to wrangle and, at times, the movie feels at odds with itself.

The result is as intractable as gravity: the longer the film goes, the more its power diminishes.

Is there enough to recommend Changeling? Yes -- from Eastwood's command of period and atmosphere to its sturdy supporting cast to Jolie's vigorous turn as a woman susceptible enough to take the imposter home, then empowered enough to claw chunks out of the establishment.

But it makes you almost wonder if the film itself might be a changeling: that at one point there was a masterpiece in the editing bay swapped out for a movie that, for all the fine work of its creators, is overlong, overwrought and shallow under the surface.

(This film is rated 14-A)

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