Review of The Whistleblower (2010) by Walter M — 02 Sep 2011

In "The Whistleblower," Kathy Bolkovac(Rachel Weisz, suitably impressive) is in a bit of a pickle. Her ex-husband has custody of their daughter and is moving out of state. Sadly, Kathy cannot get a transfer as a police officer to be near them. So, her supervisor suggests she apply for a job as a United Nations peacekeeper in Bosnia for six months for $100,000. While there, she gets the attention of Madeleine Rees(Vanessa Redgrave) for getting justice for a Muslim woman beaten by her husband and is promoted to the head of the gender affairs division. That's when Raya(Roxana Condurache) and Irka(Rayisa Kondracki) come into her life.

While "The Whistleblower" never fully gets going and suffers from more than its fair share of cliches, it is still realistic enough to suggest no great criminal mastermind in the way of Moriarty, just a lot of low level evil and lots of good people looking the other way. Luckily, Kathy(based on a real person) is not one such person. Ironically, the movie's message is if anything looks too good to be true, then it most certainly is which links Kathy to the trafficked girls, instead of perhaps Kathy thinking of her daughter when she sees them. It is definitely a plus to have such a forceful point of view as Kathy's to see the crimes unfold before us but it is so intense that the human trafficking storyline feels like another movie entirely.(Strangely enough, I thought the lectures on post-war Bosnia were the most interesting parts of the movie.) The movie also allows us in to her head to feel what she does but it is not shock or revulsion as much as it is frustration at the bureaucracy and the kind of person recruited by contractors, as the viewer is also frustrated by this deeply flawed movie.