The Whistleblower (2011) on DVD and Blu-ray January 24
The Whistleblower is a powerful drama that is anything but escapist fare. It is brutal, scary, inspiring, and inspired by actual events. Kathryn Bolkovac was sent to post-war Bosnia when she accepted a position as a U.N. peacekeeper. While there she uncovered a sex-trafficking ring that was so well entrenched, it seemed unbreakable. In attempting to rescue victims, she learned how close to home the perpetrators were.
With a cast that boasts Rachel Weisz (as Kathy Bolkovac), Vanessa Redgrave, David Strathairn, and Monica Belluci, The Whistleblower is a tense expose of good intentions gone terribly wrong. When Bolkovac assists in a successful domestic battery investigation and prosecution, she is offered a position that more specifically deals with crimes against women. Before long she discovers human trafficking, and gets little cooperation in a city where three languages are spoken, and no one admits to understanding more than one.
After a raid on a bar where women were imprisoned and offered to customers for sexual gratification no matter how violent and degrading, Bolkovac attempts to follow up with some of the women only to find they were never delivered to the shelter where authorities claimed to have taken them. Instead the women were returned to the bar after "people" were paid off.
As Bolkovac investigates she finds that the women are afraid to cooperate, and her colleagues in the UN and in the private contractor that hired her are leaking information and may be involved with the sex-trafficking ring. Local prejudice against the women inhibits her investigation, and that prejudice and contempt is shared by many of the people that are there to protect those women.
The Whistleblower forces us to consider things we’d rather not, such as criminal acts committed in other countries by United States citizens protected by diplomatic immunity, and the opportunities for corruption that are greedily seized by conscienceless people. Tense, gritty, and well-acted, it leaves its audience thinking long after viewing it. The Whistleblower is scheduled to be released on DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD January 24, 2012.
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