The Whistleblower (2011)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Disturbing yet enthralling

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The Whistleblower is a tough but necessary film to sit through. It concerns the UN back in 90's Serbia/Bosnia, a time and place characterized by extreme human savagery and unimaginable cruelty. Now during this brutal conflict, hundreds of young, displaced refugee girls were caught up in the chaos of it all and trapped in sex slavery, which was rampant at the time, creating another tragic blemish in history made worse by the fact that the UN knew well and good what was going on and did little to nothing to stop it. It's heartbreaking material no doubt, but there's a light in the darkness in the form of UN ambassador Kathryn Bolkovac (Rachel Weisz) who can't stand by and watch the corruption continue, confronting her superiors which creates further friction. The thing is, in a time of such wanton crisis, a lot of elements in the equation get written off as collateral damage or acceptable losses tearfully tallied up in barely disguised apathy in service of some greater good. Kathryn's UN boss Bill Hynes (Liam Cunningham in a nice extended cameo) has this reprehensible, all too common outlook and won't do anything to help the imprisoned girls. For a lot of people in Ivory towers of detachment, the plight of less fortunate people may not seem like a cause to get riled up over. Not Kathryn. She won't stand for it, and launches a personal crusade to expose those in power who aid and allow the sex trade to survive, and bring them down. With help from two sympathetic colleagues (David Strathairn and Vanessa Redrave) she navigates the tricky, war torn personal and bureaucratic terrains to try and liberate girls who've barely begun life and have already found themselves in hell. Weisz has an innate compassion in any role we see her in, making her the perfect woman to play this character who risks all she has to save complete strangers from a horrific fate. It should be noted that there are intense scenes of violent sexual abuse here that are super tough to watch, but necessary to impart that importance of the girl's struggle to the audience. It's nice to see true stories about a single person who stands up for many others in the face of pure evil.. gives me hope for our upside down world. PS: watch for a brief cameo from Benedict Cumberbatch.

This is possibly the most shocking feature film based upon real events which I have ever seen. As the extras (called 'Bonus') on the DVD make clear, every single episode is based upon events which really happened. The only alterations made in the film were in the conflation of multiple persons into single persons for the sake of dramatic clarity. Every detail of what happens to the girls in the film really happened to the real girls being portrayed. The film is so alarming in the massive and systematic corruption and evil which it exposes, that one's faith in international institutions like the United Nations is completely shattered. No wonder the brilliant female director of the film, Larysa Kondracki, has never directed a feature film again, but only TV episodes for series. Everyone must be absolutely terrified of her! What will she reveal next? The real whistleblower who broke this story to the world, Kathryn Bolkovac, not only really exists, but she is interviewed in the extras. She also is credited twice, as story consultant and at the head of thanks. But Bolkovac (an American of Croatian descent) was thrown out of the United Nations team and has never been able to get a job with any international agency again, because of the internal horrors which she exposed. This is all too familiar, as everyone in today's world who dares to tell the truth or tries to expose corruption is relentlessly hounded and persecuted, but never rewarded or praised. So corrupt has our world of today become. I would go so far as to say that the world has never in its entire history been as corrupt as it is now, and that is really saying something, considering what we know from history. Rachel Weisz plays Bolkovac, the lead character in the film, and it may be her finest performance. This film stimulated the people making it to rise to a high level because they all shared the same outrage at the events being portrayed. Vanessa Redgrave plays an honest United Nations Commissioner, and the real woman whom she portrays and who supported Bolkovac's whistleblowing is also interviewed in the extras on the DVD. The film was a Canadian-German co-production, probably because no one connected with the United States would touch it, as the corruption exposed was mostly amongst Americans working for the U.N. The film is mostly set in Bosnia, and Romania was used as the shooting location for that. Monica Bellucci plays a shifty UN executive who compromises other people's lives away in the bureaucratic battles inside the U.N. The Romanian actress Roxana Condurache who plays the girl Raya in this film is due to play Lauren Bacall in the forthcoming film BOGIE AND BACALL, due to shoot next year. That is highly appropriate, considering that Lauren Bacall was a Romanian Jew. All the acting in this film is high intensity and mesmerising. The direction is superb. The director, Kondracki, is a Canadian of Ukrainian descent. (For those who do not know, Canada has had a large number of Ukrainian immigrants living there for decades, the first of them to enter the Hollywood film scene having been actor Jack Palance (1919-2006), who is still very much a hero to the Canadian Ukrainian community.) Kondracki and writer Ellis Kirwan worked for years on this project, researching the subject, interviewing survivors and witnesses, and spending time with the real life Bolkovac. I believe the budget for this film was only a tiny $6 million. Everyone pitched in to make this film on a shoestring because they believed in it and the importance of its message getting across to the public. I suspect that many people worked on it for next to nothing. It is a magnificent and mind-boggling achievement, of the highest professional standard and level of excitement and intense nail-biting drama. Everyone involved can be proud. As for the subject matter and the story, I tremble to relate the full horror of it. As I write this, a scandal of 1400 young girls having been raped within about five years by gangs in Rotherham, a single town in Britain, has recently come to light, and the collusion of many police and council officials and others in authority has been headline news. But so far none of those officials has suffered any disciplinary action. So what is related in this film is eerily prescient. What the film shows is the systematic abuse of huge numbers of kidnapped girls who have been turned into sex slaves by human traffickers. But the worst part of it is that this was done in collusion with large numbers of United Nations personnel, mostly Americans. Most of them were working for a private company given the fictional name of Democra in the film, which later makes it plain that the real company went on to enjoy contracts worth billions in Iraq and Afghanistan. It does not take a great deal of imagination to work out what company it is. This wicked outsourcing of military work to private contractors by governments and international agencies is an open invitation to abuses of the worst kind, and raping, torturing, and even killing young girls who have been sold into slavery is just about as bad as it gets. That is what this film is about. Furthermore, none of the real persons was ever charged or imprisoned. The incidents all took place in Bosnia after the end of the war there, when the UN 'peacekeepers', or should I say gang rapists, were enjoying their diplomatic immunity to do any illegal thing they wanted, including taking an active part in the human trafficking and smuggling of girls in U.N. transport across borders. And remember this: no one was punished. Just think about that. The brave Kathryn Bolkovac deserves a medal. So does Elysa Kondracki. But when are we going to do something to stop these nightmarish crimes?

Kathy Bolkovac (Rachel Weisz) is a twice-married cop in Lincoln, Nebraska. Her ex-husband is moving to Georgia with her daughter. She can't get a transfer. Then she's given an opportunity to a 6 month job for $100k. It's an UN security job in post-war Bosnia. She finds the country in ruins, and the international force to police the peace to be a hodgepodge group. It's a wild lawless world where the rules are murky and they are told to monitor rather than investigate. She successful wins the first case of domestic violence in Bosnia and Madeleine Rees (Vanessa Redgrave) picks her to head the Gender Affairs Office in the IPTF. She dives into this world of private contractors, corrupted criminal world, sex trafficking, multinational diplomacy, and bureaucratic cover-up.Rachel Weisz does good work in this compelling story. The only problem is the long running time. At almost 2 hours, it is about 20 minutes too long. There are too many overly long scenes where the tension isn't up to snuff. Sometimes it feels like filmmaker Larysa Kondracki is more concerned with making a point rather than making a tense thriller. The other small problem is the inspired by true story moniker. I do wish that the movie is about the real story. If they won't do that, then it's better to just make a completely fictional story and drop the moniker.

I've never been a fan of "based on real life" films. I prefer to read this cases, do adequate research and investigations to discuss among my family or friends. Beside, directors tend to go over the line and play with feelings, making fragile minds fall in love with an ideal and avoiding the search for reality.However, this film doesn't play with your emotions, it focuses on the real subject of interest and the performances were outstanding; you can easy relate to Kathryn Bolkovac and the decision she makes. The violence is just the necessary, it's never pushed too far and the direction was very decent.The only complain I might contemplate are the slow and confusing beginning, too much explications.