Whiteout

Considering Whiteout was finished back in 2007, and has been sitting on the studio shelf since then, I didn't exactly walk in with my hopes up. Turns out, the movie's not really terrible, it's just very forgettable. Aside from the unusual arctic setting, not a whole lot stands out about this mundane murder mystery. The only things that do stand out is how laid back the whole thing is for a thriller, how the filmmakers seem to have forgotten to give their story a proper climax or ending, and how the mystery at the center of it all is about as complex as your standard episode of Scooby-Doo.

Kate Beckinsale plays a Federal Marshall named Carrie Stetko. She's stationed at an arctic base that is gearing up to evacuate before a major storm blows in, making air travel impossible. Right away, we see a problem here. Beckinsale's a lovely actress, and it would be a crime to have her covered up in a parka for most of the film's duration. The filmmakers seem to realize this, so they give us a gratuitous shower scene the first time we see her for no other reason than they know what the audience wants. Right after that, she's called in to investigate a dead body that's been found on the ice in the middle of nowhere. It looks like the victim was murdered. We know this, because the dialogue consists entirely of the characters pointing out what they and we are looking at. ("It's a body...It's head has been smashed in...", etc.) As Carrie begins to investigate who could be the murderer in such a desolate and isolated place, more bodies start popping up, and Carrie herself starts having run-ins with a mysterious ax-wielding murderer donning a hood and parka, who seems to have wandered in from a teen slasher film.

There's not a whole lot of plot in Whiteout. We see some flashbacks to Carrie's past, which led to her wanting to isolate herself from everyone else (the main reason she's in the arctic in the first place), and why she shudders a little every time she looks at or picks up her gun. Other than that, it's a fairly standard game of "guess the killer". The cast of faces are rather limited. There's the kindly old doctor (Tom Skerritt), a United Nations investigator named Robert Pryce (Gabriel Macht) with murky reasons for being in the arctic in the first place, and a pilot named Delfy (Columbus Short), who acts as Carrie's main sidekick. It's pretty easy to spot the killer. Just look for the character who keeps on showing up, but has little to do with anything else that's going on, and you'll be one step ahead of the characters the entire time. The inherent problem, of course, comes from the setting. Since everyone's covered up for most of the movie, it can sometimes be hard to tell who are the good guys, and who are the bad.

I was glad for the setting, though. It's the one thing that stands out here. There are some lovely shots of the landscapes, and it gives the movie at least a small bit of novelty. Other than that, there's nothing really worth remembering. Well, except for the climax, and it's for all the wrong reasons. I've seen plenty of anticlimactic reveals in my time, but this tops them all. It's almost like the screenplay gives us a reveal, but no pay off. The whole thing kind of sputters and dies. Not even the killer seems all that surprised when their identity is revealed. They just give a very laid back speech about why they did it, then walk away. Did the filmmakers really pat themselves on the back when this was shot? Were they really satisfied with how everything wraps up in such a way that it seems like not even the guilty even cares?

Whiteout is based on a graphic novel, and I can only hope something got lost in translation, because I can't see anything here that would absorb a reader. My screening got out less than two hours ago, and it's already starting to fade from my mind. Whiteout doesn't aspire to be anything more than what it is, and suffers because of it.

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