There have been myriad films about whistle blowers since the success of "Serpico" -- and before (eg., "On the Waterfront"). Some, like those mentioned, are quite well done. Others are Hollywoodized to the point of staged but fake reality and one hundred percent predictability. I won't mention any. Well, I will -- "The Insider" -- done strictly by the buck, I mean the book.Here's a film from Argentina about a pilot (Enrique Pineyro), a guy nobody in the major film audience ever heard of, with a handsomeness quotient the equal of a soft-boiled egg, who quietly complains to his friends, his colleagues, and his bosses about the slack way regulations are enforced by his airline company, LAPA. Whatsmore, the real Enrique Pineyro is played by the real Enrique Pineyro. His reports about equipment failure and corner cutting do nothing but get him into trouble.There is a government investigation ongoing, but the investigation isn't getting any help from LAPA executives, who want to expand the company, or from LAPA's pilots who are afraid of losing their jobs and guarded about the possibility of failure being attributed to "pilot error," something which no professional pilot wants to admit, or even talk about. Somebody fills the investigator's car with gum balls. And when that doesn't discourage him, a few bullets are sent his way through the window of his home.Pineyro wants nothing more than to fly -- and for him and his co-workers to be able to do it in safety. He writes a letter about his working conditions and sends it to -- get this -- the New York Times, who publish it in a front-page article. This leads to the resignation of the chief executives and their replacement by a bunch of clones who continue the same corrupt practices. Pilots are supposed to take regular vacations because a tired pilot is a threat to safety, but LAPA isn't giving them the time off that the law requires. In one case, the company owes a pilot SIX YEARS worth of vacations.In extremis, Pineyro resigns from LAPA and takes all the information he has to the government investigator, who then accesses all the company's files and reports, but not before a fatal accident occurs, due to lack of oversight.We don't get to see the accident. We don't get to see ANY accidents. Hardly anyone shouts at anyone else. Pineyro, aside from the ordinariness of his appearance, is perfectly ordinary. I swear that non-Hollywood productions have this eerie capacity for picking non-magnetic people for lead roles who have a talent for demonstrating just how good they are at playing their roles. Has anyone taken a close look at Daniel Auteuil's face lately? Or Jean Gabin's? It's not a zapped-up whistle-blower movie. The score is so sparse as to be hardly noticeable. (Excellent use is made of a piano piece I once picked up on my car radio. I figured it was by Mozart and I recognized the form as variations on a theme, but I couldn't make out the theme because it was so disguised. I couldn't wait for its restatement at the end, imagining it would be elegant and sophisticated. It turned out to be "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.") There are quite a few shots of the pilot and copilot at the controls of the big Boeing they fly, and they're great, with the comfortably lighted control panel in the foreground and the magnificent city lights beyond the windshield. There is no mock up of the flight deck. All the shots are done during flight. As far as I could tell, none of the other scenes were shot in a studio either.You really don't want to watch this if you have anything against subtitles, even though the flight language is English -- "gear up," "seat belts on," and so forth. And you don't want to watch it if you're easily bored if nobody thrusts his hand down a victim's throat and yanks out his bleeding pyloric sphincter. If you want heroism, high drama, car chases, and fast editing, this isn't your cup of yerba mate. But if you want a glimpse into how the real world of the bureaucracy works, you might learn from this one.

Although I give the director (and lead actor) Enrique Pineyro some creative license to include a "love interest," this is an engrossing and shocking film that exposes a real airline run by the Argentine air force (LAPA, and thank god they are no longer around) that sacrifices safety in order to save money and look good. The result of their mismanagement and flagrant disregard for safety, maintenance, and their pilots themselves was the fatal crash in 1999 on a street just a few feet from the downtown Buenos Aires airport. Filmed realistically on location, the film tells the story of a "whistle-blower" pilot (played by Pineyro himself, who was actually once a LAPA pilot)who won't compromise on safety but it mortified by what he is told to do and cover up. Pineyro's second film, "Fuerza Aerea S.A." (which I saw yesterday) is a sort of a sequel, but a documentary that deals with the problem of the air force overseeing civil aviation in Argentina. Both films have caused quite a stir and is equally chilling. Last night I read that this is being changed, directly because of Pineyro's film. Both are well worth watching, but unfortunately not released in the US yet. Highly recommended.

I've seen WRZ by Enrique Pineyro (whom I know from the Airline Pilots Assn. and I can say, being a retired airline Captain that what he depicts is real.My own experience shows the same acts of persecution and the same means of doing so but on another airline.In my case I was writing against my comrades who contributed with taking the airline to bankrupt when privatized.Saving the long distances between Enrique's reports which ended in the accident, many of the circumstances I lived personally till I retired.I think it is a very good and realistic film.Alejandro

First, sorry for my poor English, as it is not my native language. The movie is a rare gem in Argentine filmography. Thrillers, action and movies that are mainly on complex machines are not typically filmed or produced by Latin American countries, even when the subject of the movie may have taken place in these latitudes (Alive! was filmed by Canadians in Canada on an epic true story that took place in the Argentinian-Chilean Andes). So, this is a denounce of the epidemic corruption in the Argentina of the 90', told by the man that plays as himself and revives for us some of the same ordeals he lived in real life when he was an airline captain. THIS is the unique thing about this movie. It is very well done, and as pilot, I can tell that the technical side is perfect. No cheap or even expensive mock ups. All is real. The simulator sessions are simulator sessions, and the airborne scenes are filmed during real flying in the cockpit (except a passenger cabin short scene, that I read was filmed in a crew training mock up). Excellent photography that immerse the spectator in places that earth bound mortals do not usually visit. No wonder why this movie won so many prizes: apart from the political and critical intentions, it is a good example that excellent products of this kind can be made without zillions.