Whistle in the Dark

Cast: Rachel Weisz,Vanessa Redgrave,David Strathairn

Rating: **1/2

This is a film about a scandal of international proportions. It’s just that you never see the international bit. Based on a real incident of minor girls being caught in sex trade and trafficking in war-hit Bosnia,and some UN officials,diplomats and international employees being involved in it,the film suffers for keeping its focus almost entirely on the woman peacekeeping officer who blew the lid off it — Kathryn Bolkovac (Weisz).

The badly bruised and battered girls are shown and the torture they are put through is certainly horrific. However,The Whistleblower perhaps would have gained from talking about the rot in the United Nations and what happened,what seats got shaken,what doors rattled when a trembler such as this struck.

Weisz,on the other hand,is a lone ranger here. A single,determined and fearless woman,Kathryn is acting alone,making files and pinning up UN officials as suspects by name on her office board — in true American investigation style — without any thought for her rudimentary safety. She has come there for the money but decides to take up the cause of these trafficked girls as she can’t look away from what she has found is being done to them inside bars that are no more than brothels and torture chambers.

Curiously,she decides after just one raid and a question that an officer is guilty,and believes she will be allowed to take the testimony of two girls against a scandal that could hit the establishment. Obviously,things don’t go as the policewoman from Nebraska planned.

The Whistleblower has a side story about one of the victims of trafficking,a girl from Ukraine,Raya,who just wanted out of her life back home. When Kathryn finds her,she is injured and carrying an infection. She agrees to testify but is taken away by policemen,also involved in the trafficking,and delivered back to her pimps.

With all doors shut on her,Kathryn finally writes an anguished mail to the UN Chief of Staff and High Commissioner in Bosnia — a mail that’s as simplistic as the manner in which this film has been treated,despite gritty and painfully hard-hitting acting by Weisz.

The story of Raya is shocking. The story of The Whistleblower is that it isn’t just enough.