A Life’s Worth, on Viaplay

During the Vietnam War, Sen. John McCain received even harsher treatment then his fellow POW’s when their North Vietnamese Communist captors learned his father was a very senior Admiral. Unfortunately, Mikael Forss, the son of the Swedish Defense Minister, finds himself in a similar position when his squad is captured during the UN’s 1993 Bosnia “peace-keeping” deployment. Supposedly, their mission is re-opening the Mario Road supply line, but their day-to-day objectives are dangerously vague in writer-creators Mona Masri & Oliver Dixon’s six-episode A Life’s Worth, based on Magnus Ernstrom’s autobiographical novel, which is now streaming on Viaplay.

The military is only supposed to be a stepping stone for Forss, on his way to a position in the diplomatic corps and then a political career. At least that is what his father tells him. However, service in Bosnia is much more difficult than he or anyone else expected, except maybe their strict but conscientious commander, Col. Andreasson. Shocked by the death of their APC leader on their first mission, Forss reluctantly accepts the promotion to be his successor, even though he lacks confidence. Frankly, Andreasson probably should have picked the Serbian-speaking Babic. He usually does not make decisions based on politics, and he certainly resist such thinking in later episodes.

Regardless, Forss has his hands full with his APC crew. Kilpinen gets hooked on morphine self-medicating his injuries, but he seeks redemption by helping Eldin, a Muslim father, find his daughter lost after the Croatian HVO’s massacre of their Stupni Do village. Meanwhile, Strand falls for Alma, a Croatian cafeteria worker, whose family will be menaced by both Serbian militias and Bosniak paramilitaries augmented by Mujahideen.

It is painfully clear the combatants have little fear of the peacekeepers and no respect. They call them “Smurfs”’ in [dis]honor of their blue helmets. Viewers quickly see why. The first time Forss’s APC encounters war crimes in progress, HQ tells him to act on his own discretion. This is clearly a coded invitation to retreat, without using so many words.

Indeed, Life’s Worth suggests there is good reason the American military rarely places ground troops under UN command (but we sometimes contribute advisors and staff officers). Neither the objectives or the rules of engagement are ever clearly established for any of the APC crew’s operations, except perhaps Andreasson’s Stupni Do rescue mission, which they volunteer for. “Going out and just doing your best” is not something you can wargame and that’s a long-term problem.

Indeed, Masri, Dixon, and series director Ahmed Abdullahi do an excellent job portraying the Swedish military, up and down the chain of command. Much of the Balkan characterization is more simplistic. There appears to be a conscious effort to depict atrocities on all three sides. Yet, the Bosnian Muslims probably emerge with the least to answer for, while the Croatians, like Alma, are arguably the easiest former Yugoslavian characters to relate to.

The UN at Work: The Whistleblower

Whether it was facilitating genocide in Rwanda as head of “peace-keeping operations” or ignoring the graft-ridden implementation of the now notorious oil-for-food program, Kofi Annan’s record at the United Nations has permanently stained the organization’s honor. Perhaps most damning, during Annan’s stint as Secretary-General, UN Peacekeeping forces have been plagued with charges of sexual abuse across the world, including deployments in Burundi, Haiti, Liberia, Sudan, and Bosnia. Inconveniently, whistleblowers Ben Johnston and Kathryn Bolkovac publically revealed the extent to which UN diplomats, military peacekeepers, and international police forces were involved with human sex trafficking in Bosnia, accusing Annan’s specially appointed representative Jacques Paul Klein of stonewalling subsequent investigations.

Unfortunately, the names of Annan and Klein are nowhere to be found in Larysa Kondracki’s The Whistleblower (trailer here), which presents Bolkovac’s story as merely a case of rogue cops, almost entirely ignoring the complicity of the UN proper in human rights abuses committed by its personnel. The result is a frequently infuriating but substantially problematic film, which opens this Friday in New York.

Bolkovac was a popular police officer in Lincoln Nebraska, but she needed the quick payday offered by a tour of duty with the UN’s IFP. Bolkovac had lost custody of her daughter (for reasons the film never bothers to explain, though it is repeatedly used to cast aspersions on her). With her ex-husband suddenly relocating and no transfer available, Bolkovac bit the bullet and headed to Bosnia.

Much to her surprise, she found she was one of the few legitimate professionals recruited for the IFP. The local Bosnian cops were just as dodgy, even though law enforcement was their ostensive job. Still, she is able to find one honest cop, whom she helps mount the first Bosnian wife beating investigation to end with a conviction. To its credit, Whistleblower tentatively suggests sexist attitudes prevalent amongst the country’s Muslim population exacerbated the trafficking problem, but never follows up as the narrative progresses.

Quickly Bolkovac learns nearly all her fellow international cops are implicated in the conspiracy, including several who are directly involved in the actual trafficking. She only trusts the Dutch officer whom she also becomes romantically involved with. Still, she has a champion in senior diplomat Madeleine Rees, who taps Bolkovac to head the Bosnian IFP’s office of women and gender issues, probably a dubious promotion in retrospect.

Whistleblower would have arguably been a stronger film had it played it straighter. Not content to make the corporate contractor (based on the real life Dyncorp) carry the scandalous load, Kondracki and co-screenwriter Ellis Kirwin redub them Democratica, just so we do not miss the irony. It also would have helped Whistleblower’s credibility had it been more equitable identifying the nationalities of the guilty. Aside from the Irish Liam Cunningham (who must have signed with Michael Caine’s former agent considering how much work he has been getting) appearing as corporate shark Bill Hynes, all of the heavies are naturally Yanks. Yet in the actual case, the alleged perpetrators were from several member countries, with two of the most notorious being Romanian.

Rachel Weisz is perfectly fine as Bolkovac, quivering on cue to express either moral outrage or mortal fear. Unfortunately, the striking Monica Bellucci is largely wasted as Laura Leviani, a duplicitous bureaucrat for refugee affairs, who comes the closest to being a genuine UN villain. Vanessa Redgrave shows a command of humanist platitudes as Rees, but given her incendiary prejudices, her very presence weighs the film down with further baggage. However, Romanian actress Roxana Condurache is absolutely devastating as Raya, a Ukrainian woman lured into slavery, surely a trying role to assume even in a dramatic context. Through her performance, the audience gets a visceral sense of the fear and degradation such women experience. Indeed, she is the film’s redemption.

Given the seriousness of human trafficking, a crime that continues to brutalize women, particularly from Eastern Europe, Whistleblower really ought to be better, smarter, and truer. Unfortunately, it represents only the tip of the iceberg in terms of crimes committed by UN personnel. Ultimately just an okay film that tantalizingly hints at what it might have been, The Whistleblower opens this Friday (8/5) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.

Coming Soon: The Hunting Party

In October 2000 Scott Anderson wrote “What I Did on My Summer Vacation,” an article for Esquire magazine about his booze fueled misadventures, with four journalists friends (including Sebastian Junger of Perfect Storm fame), trying to track down the Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic. According to his article: “In the four and a half years since the war in Bosnia had ended, only forty-eight of the ninety-four men indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague had been captured.” In the seven years since its publication, one doubts many more war criminals have been caught, but the film The Hunting Party loosely based on Anderson’s piece has been produced and opens in New York September 7th, expanding successively wider the 14th and 21st (trailer here).

Written and directed by Richard Shepard, The Hunting Party boldly announces: “Only the most ridiculous parts of this story are true.” While there are flashes of inspiration throughout the film, and the opening and closing sequences border on brilliant, in-between Hunting Party simply is not as wildly unbelievable as it likes to think. Instead of the five journalist friends with more liquor and enthusiasm than sense, Hunting Party cuts the search party down to three, diversifying their backgrounds. Richard Gere plays down-and-out gonzo reporter Simon Hunt. Terrence Howard plays Duck, his former camera man, now enjoying a cushy network gig, and Jesse Eisenberg plays Benjamin, the annoying rookie journalist and son of a network big wig.

The strongest element of Party is its sense of place. Shot on location in Sarajevo and Croatia (doubling for Serbia), it presents a world literally scarred by war and figuratively haunted by ghosts. Their search for The Fox, the fictionalized version of Karadzic, takes on some intriguing twists and turns. Along the way, the United Nation’s incompetence is exposed (again), when the official attached to the International Police Task Force tells them he would be happy to make apprehending war criminals a priority, but he does not have a copy of the indictment list or a working fax machine—an episode the film deliberately points out was based on fact.

Gere emotes all over the screen as the tortured Hunt. Howard’s Duck however, having lost his spirit since selling out for network comfort, is understandably reserved and understated. Eisenberg’s Benjamin is simply irritating. Together they do not present a strong rooting interest. The strongest personalities on-screen are actually two small supporting parts. Mark Ivanir comes across as quirky but humane as Boris, the Bulgarian officer attached to the UN peacekeeping force, who wants to do the right thing, even if it is outside his official mandate. Also, Dylan Baker gets to chew on some of the film’s best dialogue as an arrogant CIA spook who materializes late in the film.

Hunting Party has its strengths and weakness. Despite some bland and clichéd characterizations, it moves along at a fast clip, and it does raise some valid questions. Was there a secret deal cut to protect war criminals like Karadzic during the 1995 peace talks? When the truth comes out on the Clinton administration, the real arsenic may be in their Bosnian record. For years, Clinton ignored the suffering of the Bosnians by steadfastly defending the arms embargo, which benefited the Serbs (and their Bosnian Serb allies by extension), as Serbia controlled most of the former Yugoslav army’s munitions. Did that administration also establish a policy of turning a blind eye to the fate of war criminals? A character in Hunting Party points out that they were able to find The Fox in a matter of days, whereas the UN, CIA, and NATO had five years, but were unsuccessful. Unfortunately, that is not too ridiculous to be true.