Stymied by glass ceiling restraints for transfer and promotion, Nebraska cop Kathryn Bolkovac (Rachel Weisz) accepts a well paying peace keeping gig with the United Nations in Bosnia.Although under the auspices of the UN, her employer is actually a contractor called Democra Security. Of all the countries in all the world participating in international peacekeeping missions, only the U.S. outsources contracts to private companies. This makes a mockery of UN charter and makes the American contingent little more than mercenaries.

Kathryn discovers corruption most cruel in the form of human trafficking. She realises that peacekeepers, U.N. workers, and international police are not only frequenting the brothels housing and abusing trafficking victims but complicit in the trade, profiting from sexual slavery and aided by United Nations policy granting diplomatic immunity for peacekeepers, even if they are guilty of rape, kidnapping, torture and murder.

Is there such a word as GENDERCIDE? There should be. The wilful, wanton, misogyny that murders and maims; the evil men do to women. This was gendercide of the most grievous and Kathryn had to blow the whistle.The crux of the matter in this movie is whether diplomatic immunity should translate into political impunity. Immunity is primarily a biological word but put in political parlance, it seems that some sentient beings – the inhumanity demonstrated disavows the term “human”- are immune to basic decency, particularly male beings that reduce females to chattels.

Not surprisingly, the film gives short shrift to the blokes, although there are a couple of men who are willing to make a stand against their barbarous brothers and not capitulate to the common escape clause credo that “this is Bosnia. These people specialise in fucked up.” And there are depictions of women who by duplicity or bureaucracy aid and abet the abuse.

THE WHISTLEBLOWER is an assured feature film debut from Canadian born Ukranian Larysa Kondracki. Her three female leads are exemplary – Rachel Weisz as the crusading cop, Vanessa Redgrave as her mentor and confidante and Monica Bellucci as the hard headed face of the bureaucracy that hamstrings honest humanitarian intervention.

An intelligent thriller with something to say that transcends any self-important stamp that could have toppled its entertainment value.

(c) Richard Cotter

23rd September, 2011