THE WHISTLEBLOWER shows that age-old fiend Slavery, in just about as heinous a manner as it can metastasize, is not only alive and sick, but flourishing, abetted by grotesque handmaiden Betrayal. In 1999, Nebraska cop Kathryn Bolkavec (Rachel Weisz) is assigned work as a U.N.-affiliated peacekeeper in war-ravaged Bosnia. She not only finds that brutal sex-trafficking is pervasive, but that the outfit she works for partakes, and cover for the dung runs uphill to the door of the United Nations.
It took eleven years to get the story on the screen, and the depressing subject could only summon $1,100,000 from limited showings.
Weisz gives it her all, and the supporting players are well chosen. A dark 112 minutes to spend with the bleakest of situations, but the discomfited viewer has the option of shutting off the film, a luxury denied the victims. With Vanessa Redgrave, Monica Belluci, David Strathairn, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Roxana Condurache, Paula Scramm and Benedict Cumberbatch.