Whistle Blower (2014) User Reviews

A nice journalistic drama worthy of your time

[alain-kapel5 · 8/10 · 22 March 2015]

Koreans rarely disappoint when it comes to movies. Whether you're talking about dramas or thrillers, they always boast high production values combined with good acting from all involved.

Whistle Blower is no exception. Here we have an intriguing story based on a true case that revolves around a scientist who claimed to be the first person to successfully clone human embryonic stem cells. The movie starts out with protag Yoon Min-cheol's investigation into illegal ovum trafficking that might be connected to Lee Jang-hwan, the aforementioned scientist, and his research into stem cell cloning. He decides to pursue the story further, but it quickly stirs public interest that backfires at Yoon and his network station. The rest is up to you to reveal, as it would be a shame to spoil more of the plot.

I feel like I've said enough regarding the movie. I wholeheartedly recommend it along with Silenced and Unbowed as some of the best Korean dramas I've seen recently. It might seem as a modest TV production at first, but it quietly pulls you along and doesn't let go until the end. You'll enjoy watching Yoon's fight for justice against all odds.

Decent thriller

[mister_bateman · 6/10 · 20 December 2020]

The nature and magnitude of the medical scam in this movie makes it a little hard to believe that the doctor managed to get so far with it and become this rich and famous. I also found it funny that journalists are portrayed as idealistic, unbiased fighters for truth who have freedom to investigate and actually do so, when in today's reality they are nothing but mouthpieces for their oligarch owners. But that aside it's a decent, well acted, well directed thriller with a good message that highlights corruption, greed, media manipulation and the importance of standing up against power and doing what is right, regardless of the consequences. It's all little too long though.

Interesting but not very original

[tenshi_ippikiookami · 6/10 · 12 November 2016]

"Whistle Blower" is the typical movie about journalists trying to find the truth while all the powers to be try to stop the truth from coming to light.

Based on a true story (you know, that thing that just means there is some relation to reality in the fiction we are seeing), Yoon is a news producer who gets some tip about the shady business a fertility clinic has. To his surprise, the clinic seems to be related to the most famous and respected scientist of the country, Lee. Yoon will try to find the truth with the help of a, well, the title of the movie says it: whistle blower.

The plot development is not very original with only a couple of surprises or touching moments along the way. The pace suffers in some moments, and the movie would need a faster rhythm in many of its parts. The acting, on the other hand is good enough, and all the actors feel relatable, from the ones that seem to be trying to find the truth, to Lee Geung-young's scientist Lee.

In the end, the movie ends being not particularly engaging. But the story of people trying to find the truth and fighting against the structural violence of society is nice and interesting enough to be worth the viewer's time.

Real story told in an acceptable way

[JurijFedorov · 7/10 · 25 June 2023]

It's kinda a detective story that retells a true story about research fraud in South Korea and how a celebrity and national hero was shown to be a giant fraud having tricked the scientific community worldwide with fake research. It's for sure worth a watch no matter the issues with it.

Hwang Woo-suk was the "Pride of Korea". The country was one of the poorest countries in the world after a giant civil war where USSR and China created North Korea and tried to take all of Korea until USA and UN did 99% of the military work for South Korea and created the country. They were dirt poor and needed an identity and riches fast. Hwang was a low-tier academic, but extremely charismatic and seemingly produced amazing research at his private lab with animal cloning and other groundbreaking work. He decided to hire a Western researcher who had contacts at a Western journal called Science and this researcher forced the publication of 2 papers Hwang couldn't publish himself. But when he finally published his human research something about the results seemed to good to be true and much was unexplained. It was later shown that both papers were faked.

The film shows how a South Korean investigatory TV show uncovers the giant hox and how South Korean people attacked them for it as they were going after a national hero. Hwang made sure to use other media to attack them too. This is sorta too on the nose in the movie. It's too melodramatic and the small attacks are made into giant events that cause the good guys to whine and sour in childish ways and even at times run away from interviews like spoiled teen girls. Everything looks grey and dark and the movie is overall ugly, but with good camera work. It's meant to look gloomy even though we don't see a single person with a gun and the journalists are perfectly safe at all times. They also focus on the South Korean TV story only and ignore everything else. In reality a Western journal called Nature had a journalist look into it initially. It's a shame they ignore all the other people who did much of this work. This overdramatizes how much this single TV show did and this choice makes it look overly fake even though in reality most of this did in fact happen it was just not this small and gloomy.

The movie never becomes great. As with most South Korean movies there are a ton of scenes hastily put together in a frantic manner often skipping storylines and points and you kinda need to know the story to understand what is going on at all times. Plus many actors have the same haircut and it can be hard to distinguish them. South Korean TV often focuses on many characters and interactions without focusing on a clear story. It's very smart TV, but it's not easy to get it right. Western TV would never in a million years get it right more than maybe 2 times a year while South Korean TV kinda stumbles around in it getting much of it right yet never clearly telling the story itself. This means that the movie lacks storytelling and is lacking 10 steps behind another fraud case shown in The Dropout where journalism was also a key factor. As a TV show it gets to go into details and show the single people while here we just rush through the story and even the very first scene shows that we are quite far along into the investigation and it never lets up.

I would for sure recommend exploring the story as all of this did happen and many may not remember the events. They do overdramatize events. I'm not sure the PD Su-cheop TV people stole lab material or that so many people nearly died. The journalists do a ton of stuff that seems quite unlikely and track down a million things themselves. Stuff that various random people did in real life. But again, it was likely done to dramatise the story and make it fit for a movie as you can't randomly shown a random person online figuring out that the photos in the papers were duplicates. It's also quite nice that the bad guy is just a dude who errored in his ways and not a cruel psychopath - he is a real person here. Though him promising handicapped kids to their face that his research will make them healthy is quite evil. And in real life he and his team stole a bunch of research money which this film also overlooks.