Review: The Whistleblower
If you have any sense of humanity, the movie The Whistleblower will piss you off. It will not piss you off in the sense that it is a bad movie. It will piss you off because The Whistleblower shines a light very brightly on mankind's inhumanity. And by inhumanity, I am talking about sex trafficking and slavery.
Following the breakup of Yugoslavia, a war raged in the region known as Bosnia Herzegovina. What was initially a territorial war eventual became a bitter and horrific conflict between the Serbs and Croats and included numerous atrocities including genocide, ethnic cleansing and the rape of numerous women and children. The Whistleblower is set after the 1995 Dayton accords that ended the conflict.
The Whistleblower stars Rachel Weisz as Kathryn Bolkovak, a female police officer who moves to Bosnia to serve as a UN peacekeeper. When Kathryrn arrives in Bosnia she finds herself enmeshed in a corrupt, testosterone-ruled world. She finds local police officers who neglect their duties, she finds leaders who ignore obvious abuses right under their noses ... Kathryn basically discovers wolves guarding the sheep. The worst thing she finds is rampant sex trafficking and slavery of young girls.
During her work as a peacekeeper, Kathryn comes into contact with Raya (Roxana Condurache), a young girl tricked into leaving home for a job who finds herself sold into sexual slavery along with dozens, and I would imagine hundreds, of other girls. Kathryn does everything in her power to rescue Raya and return her home to her family. Every step of the way she finds herself blocked at every level. She is blocked by the corporate entity she works for. She is blocked by the local (and highly corrupt police force). She is blocked by offending teammates who possess diplomatic immunity, and eventually she finds herself blocked by people in the UN itself. Eventually Kathryn brings her story to the highest levels of the UN -- hence the name The Whistleblower.
The movie has a strong supporting cast. David Strathairn plays a UN internal affairs investigator who helps Kathryn and Vanessa Redgrave plays a person of authority in the United Nations. The cast also includes David Hewlett, one of my favorite actors from the Stargate series, as a corrupt peacekeeper.
The Whistleblower was an immersive and a realistic portrayal of what it is like living in a world where the value of life is low and the depths that people will sink to in order to satisfy their most base and prurient nature. I found myself saying many times, "How the hell can people do this to other people?" And by drawing out an emotional response like that, the movie succeeds.