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Blu-ray Review The Whistleblower Blu-ray Review (1 Viewer)

Matt Hough

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There are few more sickening or infuriating global practices than human trafficking, and Larysa Kondracki’s The Whistleblower, a docudrama about the uncovering of a scandalous trafficking ring in Bosnia near the turn of the current century, captures the heartbreaking viciousness and indifference to human life which marks the practice quite viscerally. While the narrative might have been dumbed down a bit to make the story more of a thriller, there’s no denying that one gets caught up in the story and grinds his teeth in frustrating agony that “the good guys” were in many ways the worst purveyors of this ignoble institution.



The Whistleblower (Blu-ray)
Directed by Larysa Kondracki

Studio: 20th Century Fox
Year: 2011
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Running Time: 112 minutes
Rating: R
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 English
Subtitles: SDH, Spanish

Region: A
MSRP: $ 29.99


Release Date: January 24, 2012

Review Date: January 20, 2012




The Film

4/5


Nebraska policewoman Kathryn Bolkovac (Rachel Weisz) is having such money problems in trying to relocate to Georgia to be nearer her kids which she lost in a custody battle, she accepts the tempting offer of $100,000 to join an elite United Nations police force monitoring the transition from war to peace in Bosnia in 1999. Once there, she becomes an advocate for battered women and is so successful that she’s appointed head of the Gender Affairs department of the UN force. But in dealing with Bosnian women, she soon learns that there is a twisted undercover network of young Slavic women who are being kidnapped and sold as sex slaves, working in Bosnian clubs and bars seemingly under the eye of the Bosnian police. Kathryn is stunned to learn in her investigations that the UN’s ITPF and other international peace-keeping agencies are heavily involved in this as well, but she’s thwarted by bureaucrats and informers within the UN and the Bosnian police from being able to take any effective action. Though she has the support of her boss Madeleine Rees (Vanessa Redgrave) and head of internal affairs Peter Ward (David Strathairn), there is too much money being made for her enemies to take her actions lightly.


Credit must be given to director/co-writer Larysa Kondracki for exercising restraint in depicting the horrors and humiliations of human trafficking for these helpless women. While there is a brutal anal rape with a lead pipe along with beatings and the drugging of various women, she has allowed the camera only discreet glimpses at these atrocities. But what we see is more than enough to make the points brutally clear. The director does have a slightly annoying habit of blurring scenes before fade-outs, and even the one rather vigorous, joyous sex scene between our heroine and fellow officer Jan Van Der Velde (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) is filmed completely as a blur. Otherwise, the film paints Kathryn as a fearless justice fighter of the noblest kind standing up to the bullying and derisive men who consider her unequal to them with strength and stubbornness. Along with writer-director Kondracki, co-writer Eilis Kirwan hasn’t gone to much trouble trying to make much of a guessing game out of who the good guys and the bad guys are of the UN forces or on the Bosnian police force. If one were going to make this true story into an international thriller (a kind of true-life adventure version of Liam Neeson’s thriller Taken), then it might have been a better idea to surprise the viewer in revealing the successive identities of the villains. The final scenes are quite suspenseful and very well sustained followed by some eye-opening title frames that provide some rather infuriating follow-up to Kathryn’s investigation and subsequent reportage.


Just as she did in her Academy Award-winning role in The Constant Gardener, Rachel Weisz is a turbine, a force to be reckoned with in seeking out justice for the oppressed. She has real screen presence but vulnerability, too, captured beautifully in a climactic scene when she’s begging one girl she’s grown attached to to come with her. Roxana Condurache as Raya, the girl Kathryn becomes so close to, offers an exquisitely poignant portrait of a girl whose dreams of a free social life away from her overbearing mother (Jeanette Hain) crumble away once she’s enveloped in the web of these abusive torturers. Vanessa Redgrave is earnest and concerned in her three scenes in the film, but this wonderful actress doesn’t have nearly enough to do in the movie. Likewise David Strathairn who offers some IA muscle early on but proves mostly ineffectual later when things go from bad to worse. Jeanette Hain's concerned mother is the other truly inspired performance in the movie.



Video Quality

4.5/5


The film’s theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 is faithfully reproduced in this 1080p transfer using the AVC codec. Such dark subject matter deserves a dark color and brightness palette, and this transfer serves that up in spades. Sharpness is excellent, and flesh tones are very natural looking. For such a dark transfer, black levels are very good but not at their deepest. Shadow detail likewise varies from very good to only fair. The white subtitles used in moments when other languages than English are spoken are very easy to read. The film has been divided into 28 chapters.



Audio Quality

4.5/5


The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound mix has definite strengths, especially in its utilization of the entire soundstage for Mychael Danna’s incessantly thumping score. There are some striking split sound effects in the fronts and rears and one very noticeable panning effect through the right soundstage. Dialogue is well recorded and is mostly in the center channel though there are a few sporadic moments of directionalized dialogue.



Special Features

1/5


“The Real Whistleblower: Kathryn Bolkovac” introduces us to the real woman who now lives in Amsterdam and lets us hear a few words from her along with her movie counterpart Rachel Weisz, co-star Nikolaj Lie Kaas, director Larysa Kondracki and co-writer Eilis Kirwan. It runs 5 ½ minutes in 1080p.


The disc includes promo trailers for FX television series, Martha Marcy May Marlene, and There Be Dragons.



In Conclusion

4/5 (not an average)


A suspenseful and somewhat harrowing docudrama about one of the most heinous scandals coming out of the Bosnian war, The Whistleblower is an entertaining if truly somber real-life thriller. The sound and picture are top notch and even without much in the way of bonus material, the Blu-ray disc is well worth seeing. Recommended!



Matt Hough

Charlotte, NC

 

dmiller68

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It looks interesting I'll add it to my Netflix cue as I'm not sure it has multi-watch feeling to it.
 

Adam Gregorich

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Thanks Matt. I saw the trailer on the front of another Fox title recently and it looks like a great film. Usually that means I get my hopes up for a mediocre film, but based on your review I'm going to have to move it to the front of the queue. Here is the trailer:
 

Matt Hough

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Thanks for adding the trailer, Adam. I don't know why Fox didn't include the trailer on the disc as, like you said, it's certainly been on other recent Fox releases.
 

Adam Gregorich

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Originally Posted by MattH.
Thanks for adding the trailer, Adam. I don't know why Fox didn't include the trailer on the disc as, like you said, it's certainly been on other recent Fox releases.

Most trailers these days are eeeeh to me, but this trailer screams "watch me"!
 

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