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The Whistleblower
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Andy James & Noor Razzak (22nd February 2012). |
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The Film
 This is one of those all too rare films I had never heard of until it was released. I'll clarify: I read a lot of film news and reviews, across a number of different websites and blogs, and not once, come across any mention of "The Whistleblower". It's odd enough I felt moved to mention it here. And to also ponder the confusing nature (from an outsider perspective) of international distribution. Why is it "The Whistleblower" was afforded a theatrical release while other small-medium films - are released straight to DVD, months after they've played internationally? Perhaps a question to be explored in a longer post. "The Whistleblower" is the true-story of Nebraskan cop Kathryn Bolkovac (Rachel Weisz) who takes a job as a peacekeeper/supervisor in post-war Bosnia and comes to find herself involved in investigating prevalent trafficking of female sex slaves. She's a tough but caring character, an honest cop apparently taking the job for the big pay-day which will allow her to move closer to her daughter. Her expectations and sense of Western morality are challenged once she's actually got boots on ground - the majority of her fellow peacekeepers seem to have no experience in law-enforcement and crimes against Bosnian women, Muslims especially, are all but never investigated. The successful conviction of an abusive husband leads to her being appointed to a Women's Affairs role where she where she comes across a dodgy, dingy Bosnian bar. There is evidence not only of women being sexually abused and trafficked across the borders, but that UN employees are active participants. The film is structured like a police procedural thriller - the uncovering of evidence, the horrific crimes - but the sense of tension never really extends to Bolkovac. There is no real point where it feels like she herself could be in any real danger. Oh, there are some threatening phone-calls and there is increasing evidence of the higher-ups attempting to cover everything up, but there is no threat of physical harm to her, or even threats to her reputation. So while there is a genuine threat of harm and possible death hanging over the poor girls who are abused and degraded, Bolkovac feels largely untouchable. Weisz is, of course, an easily assured presence as Bolkovac as she tries to navigate the confounding bureaucracy surrounding the post-conflict area. More frustrating the sense of flat tension though, is the cinematography choices. Honestly I'm about at my limit of close, shaky camera work; there's is something to be said for a well-constructed and laid out shot. This type of camera work no longer serves to bring me in closer to the action but instead distances me by making itself known. "The Whistleblower" is a decent enough, generally pretty intelligent film that really isn't too much more than that. It doesn't really achieve any sort of screaming indictment or powerhouse presentation: the power of the film comes from the actual true-story itself, rather than any effort from the filmmakers. Again, which is not to entirely deride it or them. Everyone does fine enough work here. There are appearances throughout from other great actors like Vanessa Redgrave, David Strathairn, Monica Bellucci and Benedict Cumberbatch with painful and powerful work from the unknowns playing the poor girls. And this is all in service of telling us about very real, very horrific historic events; events that serve to anger any right-minded individual. The extent to which the UN heads are shown to be complicit in derailing the investigation to avoid scandal is an indictment on everyone involved. It's just that the film doesn't achieve anything more than that; it doesn't fully engage and involve it's audience.
Video
Presented in the film's original theatrical ratio of 2.35:1 fox has brought this film onto disc in HD 1080p 24/fps mastered using AVC MPEG-4 compression. The result is pretty solid, film grain is nice and natural, depth and detail look great and textures are nicely balanced. Colors look solid, skin tones are natural, blacks are little too deep and some scenes are little hard to make out minute detail and while sharpness is consistent, there are a few shots here and there that look a little soft, but this isn't too much of a problem. Technically the image is terrific, no compression related issues, no edge-enhancement or artefacts. Overall it's a good enough image for a recently released film.
Audio
A single audio track is presented here, English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mixed at 48kHz/24-bit. The audio track is a fairly standard audio mix for a film of this kind. Dialogue is clear and clean, ambient sounds are decent and music works well in the surrounds but as far as complexity goes, there isn't any. It comes across as a paint-by-numbers audio track that does the job, it doesn't overly impress nor does it really disappoint. It falls squarely in the "ok" category. Optional subtitles are included in English, English for the hearing impaired and Spanish.
Extras
"The Whistleblower" didn't exactly light the box office on fire, so don't expect a plethora of incredible extras that delve deeply into the film's production, we get what may as well be a bare-bones release, a very brief featurette and a handful of bonus trailers, that's about it... Below is a closer look at these scant supplements. "Kathy Bolkovac: The Real Whistleblower" (1080p) is a featurette that runs for 5 minutes 31 seconds, this brief clip basically takes a look at the woman behind the real life story this film is based on. It features interviews with Bolkovac as well as key cast and crew. There are also a series of bonus trailers (1080p) for: - "FX Networks" promo runs for 1 minute 2 seconds. - "Martha Marcy May Marlene" runs for 2 minutes 33 seconds. - "There Be Dragons" runs for 2 minutes 24 seconds.
Overall
The film review was originally published on the blog Rockets and Robots are Go! by Andy James. The A/V and supplements were reviewed by Noor Razzak.
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