"The Whistleblower"

Reviewed by Danny the Demented
Updated 13 December 2011


OK, let me be the whistleblower and tell you now that this movie blows. There, I just saved you NT$260 (calculate this into your currency, whatever that is), you are welcome. 

A movie inspired by true events, "The Whistleblower" is about a policewoman named Kathryn Bolkovac (Rachel Weisz) who risked her job and life to expose the involvement of UN personnel and government officials in sex-trafficking and prostitution in post-war Bosnia. Now don't get me wrong, the event was horrible and the message of the film is important, and I strongly urge people to go on the internet to search more about this true event and just sex-trafficking in general. However, while the movie brings with it an important message, the execution of the film is poor and the movie moves with no pace to speak of and everything was just kind of all over the place. The protagonist clearly has a troubled private life and a complicated relationship with her daughter which I am sure the director put it there to make Kathy more complex and relatable but this back-story was never really shown or properly built upon. Kathy then showed up in Bosnia and quickly became the savior everyone was waiting for but her success (instructing a Bosnian policeman to commit a criminal) was very briefly mentioned (by briefly I mean less than 2mins) and never explained. The rest of the movie moved with similarly strange pace and none of the characters, good or bad, are likable or unlikable. 


Rachel Weisz as the lead was acceptable as she always is, but her performance is so rushed that she couldn't have done anything other than just being satisfactory, and mediocrity is not enough to carry a mess like this to the finishing line. The casting of Monica Bellucci was very bizarre also. Why cast an accomplished actress to play a role (the director of some agency) that had the screen time of less than 5 mins of the entire freaking film? The role holds no importance and you cast Monica freaking Bellucci to play it? Way to spend your budget Larysa Kondracki (director)!  


All in all, a mess of a film and certainly not worth your time to see it in the theater. Instead, use the movie's running time (112 mins) and look up the event yourself. You'd get way more out of the internet than the movie. You blew it,  "The Whistleblower", you blew it big time. My name is Danny and I endorse this message.