Hail Angelina, Mother-of-the-Year on screen and off! In a Best Actress quality performance, she ably plays a strong mother going through the most trying of ordeals, in similar fashion to the strong wife she played in A Mighty Heart.

Clint has said he wanted her for the part because her looks fit the movie’s interwar period yet also look contemporary. He emphasizes this by painting her Jagger lips bright red, while toning down the rest of her face under pancake makeup, framing it all inside a tight hat. Her lips aglow like a mother’s loving heart, the effect is continually startling.

John Malkovich delivers one of his patented oily operator performances, here as a crusading minister whose motives we question simply because he’s played by Malkovich.

Expertly mounted, the movie wends its way through the byzantine story in a way that maximizes the mystery, while placing it in a sepia toned 1920s Los Angeles.

Serious violence against boys, mostly implied but chillingly so. Also a realistic hanging adds to the story, but might be too much for delicate constitutions.

The movie appears to be remarkably true to the Christine and Walter Collins story. Spoiler Alert The fact that this innocent mother and son were doubly victimized – first by a crime-of-the-century serial killer, then by an incompetent and bullying police department – seems like it could only happen in the movies.