Reported By:
| Edited By: Daniel Pinto |Source: DNA |Updated: Nov 21, 2013, 01:44 PM IST
Film: The Whistleblower
Director: LarysaKondracki
Cast: Rachel Weisz, Vanessa Redgrave, Monica Bellucci, David Strathairn
Rating: ***
The Whistleblower, based on true events set around the time of the aftermaththe Bosnian War, is about a chutzpah-filled UN international police officer, Kathryn Bolkovac, who is in a desolate plight to blow the lid off a shameful scandal that would show the UN and government contractor DynCorp in less-than-favourable light.
Bolkovac has a tendency to get lost in her work, the foremost reason why her ex-husband holds custody of her daughter. After being taken in by the generous pay cheque offered to her by private defence contractor Democra (based on WikiLeaks-target DynCorp), when she arrives in war-torn Sarajevo, Bolkovac learns that with local prejudices and chauvinism reigning supreme, reconstruction work and instilling rule of law is harder that she thought.
However, the principled former Nebraska policewoman successfully ensures the meting out of justice to offenders of women and minority-centric crimes and catches the eye of UN official Madeleine Rees (Redgrave), who promotes her. But when she uncovers the large-scale embroilment and complicity of the company and her colleagues in inhumane local sex slavery rings and cross-border human trafficking, Bolkovac sees her efforts to bring the guilty to book from within the system, coldly and systematically thwarted.
The Whistleblower is provocative, often disturbing, looks into a seriousbut overlookedissue (human trafficking is the world’s fastest growing criminal industry and, as an illegal activity, is second only to drug trafficking in terms of profitability) without trivialising it with unneeded fluff. However, perhaps, in a bid to make its audience proactive towards the cause,it eschews catharsis (at least in the Judgment at Nuremberg or Few Good Men vein).
While the film succeeds in sensitising us to human rights issues as a thriller, though, The Whistleblower relies too heavily on the audience having to root for the female lead who, though ballsy, is equally vulnerable in her HQ as well as a dingy den behind a local brothel, uh private club, which she is investigating by herself…at night, of course.
Visually, The Whistleblower, isn’t very striking or inventive, but Weisz’s performance in the drama, however, shines through its duller aspects. Her character’s virtue and sense of duty springs not only from her uprightness as a law enforcer or to some extent unrealised maternal instinct, but a sense of humanity, which is lost in the labyrinthine bureaucracy and downright callousness in the organisation’s higher-ups who discredit, and later downplay her assertions.
The Whistlebloweris film worth taking a look at, not for its entertainment value, but because it jolts you with its content with its factual aspects rather than fictitious ones.
