Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Larysa Kondracki’s “The Whistleblower” is an abysmal rarity. It’s a conspiracy thriller lacking any real thrills. This grim, plodding indictment of the United Nation’s handling of post-war Bosnia squanders the considerable talents of its cast and sends the audience out of the theater feeling anesthetized rather than enlightened. The 20-year saga of underage human trafficking in Bosnia is a tragic subject ripe for dramatization, but it deserves far better than this.
Rachel Weisz plays Kathryn Bolkovac, a plucky Nebraskan policewoman volunteering for the international peacekeeping force in Bosnia only to uncover a flourishing sex trade. Weisz, essentially reprising her “Constant Gardener,” succeeds in injecting the role with her usual heroic intensity. But the contrived script tries to reduce her struggle for justice into a simplistic crusade.
The film has no shortage of fine performers doing their best to overcome the material. David Strathairn radiates noble exhaustion as an Internal Affairs agent and a hagard-looking Monica Bellucci appears as a devious bureaucrat. The great Vanessa Redgrave, unfortunately, barely registers in a do-nothing role as Kathryn’s mentor.
The bleak Romanian landscape where the movie was shot almost warrants a character mention of its own, infusing the film with a suitably dreary atmosphere.
Based on true events in the late 1990s, the film’s subject matter would lend itself better to the documentary format, where drama is mined instead of manufactured. What happened to these young women is horrifying. The only moments of real power come when their suffering is laid bare.
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