The Whistleblower

The Whistleblower (2010)
Director: Larysa Kondracki
Actors: Rachel Weisz, David Strathairn, Monica Bellucci

Synopsis: Nebraska cop, Kathryn (Rachel Weisz), accepts a secondment out to Bosnia in the late nineties. She slowly uncovers a sinister human trafficking/sex exploitation ring that extends right into the heart of the United Nations and the private contractor that employs her out there….

Review: The cardinal sin The Whistleblower commits is in taking two extremely serious, highbrow subject areas – people trafficking and the endemic corruption within a seemingly infallible institution like the United Nations – and filming them in a lowest common denominator, hackneyed standard. I know we’re dealing in a vile canvas of victimhood and villainy, but all the players in The Whistleblower are broad ciphers, in service of the simplistic, didactic intentions of the plot. The wholly unconvincing end where Rachel Weisz’s heroine films an interview with the BBC where she’s asked “would she do it again?” (i.e. play the ‘whistleblower’), is such a blatant rip-off of the infinitely more powerful and intelligent ‘crusader’ picture, The Insider, that it inadvertently betrays the second-hand, overfamiliar feel of all this film’s hustle and grammar. (May 2014)