THE WHISTLEBLOWER is disturbing, violent, and sad. Based on the experiences of real life heroin Kathryn Bolkovac, played by Rachel Weisz, the true-life thriller presents many different problems with a very complicated system. It is the story of Bolkovac, an american cop who goes to Bosnia to be a peacekeeper after the war. She works for a privet company called Democra, funded by of the U.N, and whose workers have legal immunity in Bosnia. Bolkovac quickly impresses and is promoted to department head of domestic affairs. Soon she is called to a case of two young women, badly beaten, who have escaped a bar where they were being forced to work as prostitutes. As soon as Bolkovac looks into bar she finds evidence that many United Nation employees not only raping the girls, but many are profiting and even involved in trafficking the girls across the border. As Bolkovac begins to put together files on all the victims the corruption proves to run deep, and not only is she unable to protect the girls who have escaped from being taken back to the bar, she watches as her files are all closed with no action being taken and every door is closed in her face.
First time director Larysa Kondracki makes a very straight forward film. The tones are grey, the music is subtle, not over dramatic, and the script is straight forward. No part of this movie is sentimental and it works best when following Bolkovac's trying to get these girls help, and weakens during scenes of her personal life, which are few. Most surprising to me, THE WHISTLEBLOWER is also strong when introducing and following, Raya, the girl whom Bolkovac tries to save through the entire film. It opens with a scene of Raya and her friend in Sarajevo, who are tricked into thinking they are about to leave for a job at a hotel, by a man they know trust. As we watch them get their passport pictures taken in his apartment, we know good things are not ahead of them, but they are happy and excited to go on an adventure, clueless to the evil greed at work. Later, when the girls are shown again, months later and following horrific abuse, their appearance is shocking. Kudos to the costume and makeup department for creating such authentic looks for all the girls in the film.
While this film has scenes that are very very hard to watch, I applaud it for showing the most unflinching portrait of the awful conditions these girls are put through. It does not glamorize anything, which might seem a strange word to use for sex slavery, but most films about this subject matter tend to clean it up. Since the girls are used for sex, it seems hard for filmmakers to keep it from being completely unsexy, by making the girls look pretty or the beds they are on clean. Another thing movies with this subject matter tend to do is go out of their way to prove the "goodness" or "innocence" of the victims, as if we need proof of how undeserving they are. To explain what I mean I will use 2007's TRADE as an example: TRADE is the story of a two females kidnapped by a gang to be sold into slavery. They are, 13 year old Adriana and Veronica, a Polish women in her twenties. The two of them become close as they are taken from Mexico city, into America and on a tour across the country where they stop at different places for men, who know about them from an internet site, rape them. Almost every scene of the girls does something to prove show their goodness. After being raped Adriana fears her mother will not love her any longer, because she is dirty now. In several scenes she breaks down in tears crying that she is dirty and unlovable now. Her biggest fear, despite the constant threat death and violence, is that her not being a virgin makes her bad. Veronica, on the other hand, is the "strong one" she fights off the men as long as she can, she tries her hardest to protect Adriana by offering herself and eventually kills herself by jumping off a cliff instead of taking a beating from her kidnapper. The image of her jumping off is done in slow motion, her long beautiful hair flying behind her as she jumps. The strangest aspect to her death, to me, is that the man is then shown to to have remorse for her death. The same man who has been beating and raping these girls as he prepares to sell them to the highest bidder, changes his entire violent nature seeing Veronica kill herself. He even later helps the younger girl escape, saying he feels awful about the death of Veronica. I guess we are to believe that in death Veronica's goodness changed him.
I could go on and on about how bad TRADE is, but I will stop. The point I am trying to make is that it is unnecessary to make these characters so pure, so good, it simply makes them one dimensional and less real. Human trafficking is awful, girls being kidnapped, tortured and raped is awful. I am confused by the need to show how good the victims are, that isn't the point. The point is that what is being done to them is evil and the only way to show it is dirty and real.
I very much appreciated WHISTLEBLOWER's depictions of the enslaved girls, because it's straight forward, there are no touching monologs between victims or scenes of them crying over their purity being taken. These girls are simply terrified, and they want to survive, but are powerless to the men who abuse them. these men are the one's with choices, and they choose to profit off suffering.
The two things that stuck with me after this film, were the horror depicted in certain scenes, and the absolutely amazing performance given by Rachel Weisz. I have always been a fan of hers, despite THE MUMMY, and I would love to see her get a nomination next year for Best Actress.
I also spent a lot of time researching the real Kathryn Bolkovac after watching the movie. She is a hero and the fact that so little has been done to any of the people involved in this scandal is beyond disturbing. The WHISTLEBLOWER shows one women trying to do what is right, against a powerful establishment full f people abusing their power and getting away with it.
