Whisky Romeo Zulu opens with a grim-faced investigator sitting alone in an office and listening to voices of the dead-the recording from a black box retrieved in the wake of an air disaster. In August of 1999, an Argentinean Boeing 737 flying out of Buenos Aires attempted to abort takeoff, skidded off the runway, and crashed, killing 67 people. This tense docudrama traces the events leading up to this tragedy, tying them directly to the deregulation of the Argentinean airline industry and the resulting cutbacks in safety and maintenance (and implicitly paralleling Argentina's financial crisis). Writer/director Enrique Piñeyro (who was once a pilot for Linea Aerea Privada Argentina but quit in disgust over safety policies and became an actor) also stars as the pilot who first resists, then tries to expose an industry that treats safety regulations as beside the point. In light of empty fire extinguishers, broken equipment, and pilots too complacent or too intimidated by management to object, it's a matter not of “if,” but “when,” a terrible accident is going to take place. Piñeyro's pilot makes an appealing hero, a hangdog, physically unimpressive man who needs a shave, but who has a rock-hard integrity rooted in his love of flying, and Mercedes Morán is also very fine as Marcela, a childhood love of the pilot who turns out to be more directly involved in the unfolding tragedy than he first realizes. Much more than a well-crafted whistleblowing thriller, this film is a powerful critique of profit-making over concern for human life.