Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

The Whistleblower Blu-ray Movie Review

A message movie that airs some dirty UN laundry.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater January 16, 2012

Considering its title, you'd be forgiven for thinking The Whistleblower is simply another little man versus The Man tale of white collar corporate corruption, like The Insider or Silkwood or the fantastic documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Actually, the based-on-a-true-story film--starring Rachel Weisz as a contracted peacekeeper in Bosnia--is darker and more visceral than that, a consciousness-raising trek through the horrific underground world of sex trafficking. Like Weisz' earlier film, The Constant Gardner, which took on unethical pharmaceutical experimentation in Africa, The Whistleblower is about organizations exploiting the very same poor and defenseless people that they claim to serve and protect. As a Big Issue movie, it's engineered to provoke moral outrage--and it certainly does--but it also manages to avoid the sour preachiness of similar films by focusing intimately on a singular oppressed sex slave and her female would-be rescuer, both of whom are fighting against a misogynistic, male-dominated system with deep pockets and diplomatic immunity. Although it's far from a perfect film, it is a powerful one, raging against a hypocritical machine and demonstrating that money too often takes precedence over human rights.

Weisz plays real-life whistleblower Kathy Bolkovac, a recently divorced midwestern cop who--in order to raise money to move closer to her kids--takes a 1-year, $100k tax-free gig as a UN peacekeeper in post-war, 1999 Bosnia, a nearly lawless wasteland of misery. She naively assumes she'll be working with the best of the best, but her company, Democra--a thin guise for the still-controversial defense contractor DynCorp--hires just about anyone with a high school diploma. Her job is to liaise with local law enforcement--a boy's club if there ever was one--to investigate interethnic crimes, and she turns out to be quite good at it, successfully bringing cases to court that no one else wants to touch.

This quickly attracts the attention of Madeleine Rees (Vanessa Redgrave), the leader of the UN's High Commission on Human Rights, who makes Kathy the head of the gender issues division and tasks her with investigating domestic disputes and sex trafficking. Talk about opening a can of worms. The stuff Kathy digs up goes so deep, and is so dirty with defense money and misused diplomatic immunity that it makes the Blackwater scandals in Iraq look positively humanitarian. Not to give too much away, but many of her male coworkers are not only frequenting and accepting payoffs from brothels where women are being held as slaves, but they're also actively involved in transporting the young girls across the Serbian border in UN vans.

The film hones in on one of these girls, Raya (Roxana Condurache), a teenager who's sold into forced prostitution by her crooked uncle. Raya becomes the emotional centerpiece of Kathy's work--a representation of all the wronged girls--when Kathy makes a promise to bring the men responsible for her enslavement to justice. The closer Kathy gets to this goal, of course, the more dangerous the stakes become, and it's here that we start to see the extent of the top-to-bottom institutional corruption. Her phone gets tapped. Democra's HR rep insists she take a vacation, with an or else insinuation in his voice. The men in her division shoot cold eyes at her and leave threatening, anonymous messages on her answering machine. She has her allies, including her Dutch boyfriend Jan (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), Madeleine Rees, and a discrete Internal Affairs agent (David Strathairn), but it becomes clear that someone high on the UN ladder is trying to squelch Kathy's investigations.

First-time director Larysa Kondracki, who co-wrote the script with Eilis Kirwan, has created a terrifying and often repugnant account of the sex trade, and as a piece of social issue awareness-raising cinema, it totally succeeds, even if it has some narrative shortcomings, which it does. Truth might be stranger than fiction, but pure fiction is usually better plotted, and The Whistleblower just isn't intricate enough to be considered a real political thriller. Kondracki also has a tendency to take certain scenes over-the-top dramatically, which has the effect of undercutting the deadly seriousness of the real events. The performances, however, are across-the-board magnificent. This just might be one of Rachel Weisz' best roles to date. Physically, she moves convincingly with that stocky confidence that you sometimes see in female cops, and beyond that, you simply believe her character's driven passion to do the right thing. Vanessa Redgrave and David Strathairn are both wonderful as Kathy's conspiratorial helpers, and Monica Bellucci takes an icy turn as a sympathy-less diplomat coldly beholden to the letter of the law.

If there's one thought that you'll come away from The Whistleblower with, it's that men--when the opportunity for easy sex and cash arises-- can become seriously sadistic pigs with no regard for basic morality or human rights. This is the sort of film that makes you look at its villains and ask, how can you possibly live with yourselves? The men who sell their female relatives as "indentured" prostitutes, knowing full well the girls will never, ever pay off their supposed "debt." The UN "peacekeepers" who batter women in what are essentially rape dungeons, strewn with used syringes and condoms. And, of course, the mid-level bureaucrats who facilitate the ongoing abuse by covering it up through whatever means necessary. It's always uncomfortable to be confronted with the fact that, yes, people like this do exist, and The Whistleblower will make you very uncomfortable.

The Whistleblower Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shooting on grainy 35mm, director of photography Kieren McGuigan has given The Whistleblower a moody, intentionally gritty look, and 20th Century Fox has replicated it wonderfully on Blu-ray, with a strong 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer. The chunky grain structure hasn't been touched by digital noise reduction and there are no signs of edge enhancement or overt compression problems, making this a faithful port to home video. There are, however, a few traits inherent to the cinematography that are worth pointing out. The most notable one is that the contrast curve is heavily weighted in the shadows, which often obscure detail in darker scenes. I have no doubt this is intentional, but black levels probably could've been a bit less intense. It also seems that there are several scenes where the focus isn't precise, creating a slightly soft image. Otherwise, the picture is more than adequately sharp--with satisfying detail in facial, hair, and clothing textures--and densely colored, utilizing a palette of grungy, dirty-looking hues. This isn't an "eye candy" film by any stretch of the imagination, but it comes across effectively enough on Blu-ray.

The Whistleblower Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Whistleblower sounds off on Blu-ray with 20th Century Fox's usual lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround sound presentation. Like the picture quality, there's nothing here that will outright amaze you--no real ear candy--but the mix is clear and dynamically weighty, and features some decently immersive sound design. Although the experience is anchored up front, the rear channels are used fairly often for environmental ambience--like rain or wind or whore-house clamor--and occasional effects, from zipping UN vans and exploding land mines to helicopters chop-chopping through between speakers. The subwoofer kicks in impressionistically when necessary to add some dramatic oomph, and the track is filled out with a quietly involving score. Dialogue is always clean and easily understood, and for those who might need or want them, optional English, English SDH, and Spanish subtitles are available.

The Whistleblower Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The lone bonus feature on the disc is Kathy Bolkovac: The Real Whistleblower (1080p, 5:31), a short featurette that includes interviews with Bolkovac, Weisz, and the film's writers and director.

The Whistleblower Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Whistleblower will make you angry--at institutional hypocrisy, at bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo, at the kind of men who would buy and sell women as sex slaves--and that's precisely the point. This film wants you to know that sex trafficking exists, and that something needs to be done about it. It wants you to be morally outraged, and you will be. Of course, Big Issue movies like this always run into the danger of prioritizing the social message over the storytelling, and yes, The Whistleblower could use some narrative tightening, but it avoids most of the usual didactic pitfalls and makes its case while being entertaining--if the word can be applied to a film about sex trafficking--and emotionally powerful. The film looks and sounds excellent on Blu-ray, but I might put this one in the "rental" rather than "purchase" category, as I'm not so sure it's something you'd want to watch repeatedly.