Whistleblower

A debut feature wins major awards at the Seattle and Whistler film festivals. It's a docudrama thriller re-telling post-civil-war Bosnian scandals (child-sex slavery and human trafficking). They were connected to a U.S. military contractor (Dyncorp), covered up by the U.N. and revealed by a Nebraska policewoman working for the U.N. as a highly-paid contract peacekeeping monitor. She's The Whistleblower, who went to the U.K. courts to seek justice for wrongful dismissal, and won her case. You can safely bet that, even if such a film was made by Angelina Jolie, it wouldn't get made by any commercially-minded American company.

Instead, it's a Canadian-German production, written and directed by Toronto-born Larysa Kondracki, mostly filmed on location in Romania. Remarkably, it attracted top acting talents for walk-on cameo parts. The Brit contingent included Vanessa Redgrave and Benedict Cumberbatch; Italy's Monica Belluci, Denmark's Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Californian David Strathairnalso appear.

Rachel Weisz is convincing as the real-life heroine, Kathryn Bolkovac, an increasingly angry professional disgusted not just by the Bosnian realities of racism, religious bigotry, sexism and callous brutality, but also by the tainted multi-billion-dollar business of international aid, corporate fraud and dishonesty, and international diplomatic connivance. As with Erin Brockavich, the twice-divorced whistleblower's personal failings are noted, but unfortunately for this woman's fight, the direction doesn't have a similar cinematic panache. It reports the horrors of the trafficking trade, but shies away from the necessary melodramatics that would better explain the policewoman's angst and anger.

This is a competent TV movie, akin to the European Storm production starring Kerry Fox as another real-life female campaigner. Worthy, but inappropriately flat.