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Written by Jason Green Friday, 11 September 2009 09:23

It's a shame that this movie starts so capably and ends so unsatisfactorily.

 

 

 

 

U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) is the only law enforcement at a research site at the bottom of the world. She's just days from turning in her badge and leaving Antarctica for good when a pilot reports a "popsicle"—which turns out to be the frozen body of a researcher. Immediately suspecting foul play, Carrie has three days to solve the first murder in the history of Antarctica before the last plane leaves for the winter—stranding her at the base camp for the six-month-long darkness of winter with a killer on the loose.

Whiteout is based on the 1998 graphic novel of the same name by crime novelist-turned-DC Comics mainstay Greg Rucka (Detective Comics, Queen & Country) and artist Steve Lieber (Hawkman). Rucka's first comics work, the book's main conceit was a murder mystery but, at its heart, it was more of a noir crime story than a whodunit. Director Dominic (Swordfish, Gone in 60 Seconds) Sena's film version of Whiteout casts aside much of Rucka's atmospherics for a taut, straightforward crime thriller with some gross-out post-mortem moments, a sort of CSI: Antarctica.

If there's one thing Sena does well, it's capture the bone-chilling cold of Antarctica. The desolate, ice-covered landscapes and hurricane-force breezes that stir up blinding snowstorms (or "whiteouts") are enough to make you shiver in your seat. The earlier parts of the film take excellent advantage of this, particularly a fight between the icepick-wielding murderer (his identity masked in snow gear) and a gloveless, shivering Carrie desperately feeling her way down a guideline to the safety of the indoors. It's harrowing, edge-of-your-seat stuff.

But as the film wears on, Sena starts losing track of what kind of film he's trying to make. Is it a mystery? A thriller? A slasher flick? An action movie? It reaches to be all four and ends up failing at all of them. The mystery is wrapped up all too neatly, with a series of exposition-heavy scenes that drag down the film's momentum. In trying to one-up the earlier outdoor fight, Sena crafts another extended outdoor guideline fight that fails to match the danger-packed thrills of the first one, lasts far too long, and ends limply. It sets the stage for an ending caked in enough cheese to sour the rest of the movie. It's a shame that this movie starts so capably and ends so unsatisfactorily.

The actors do the best they can with what they're given, and their skills keep the movie watchable even as it falls off the rails. Beckinsale is a very different Carrie than the hard-as-nails heroine of Rucka's original, but she makes for a captivating lead, particularly as she brings to life the guilt that haunts Carrie and drove her to Antarctica in the first place. It's a gas watching Tom Skeritt chew up the scenery as the base's gruff doctor and Gabriel Macht does a solid job as UN agent Robert Pryce, but neither actor can quite sell the silly turns the script takes as it lurches towards its ending.

Whiteout sat on the shelves, completed, for nearly two years before it saw release, usually a telltale sign of a terrible movie. While Whiteout is far from terrible, its identity crisis and unsatisfactory ending make it hard to recommend. It's perhaps unsurprising that Rucka and Lieber's original had none of these problems. While they both ultimately get to the same destination, the vastly different paths they take (from gender-switching Macht's character to holding back the truth behind the murder until the film's final scenes) seem to imply that sticking more closely to the source material could only have helped. | Jason Green

 

Official Website: http://whiteoutmovie.warnerbros.com/