Photo by AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures
Kate Beckinsale is shown in a scene from "Whiteout."
They should put Wite-Out on the script and try again.
It has been a while since we have seen a misfire on the scale of “Whiteout.” This Antarctic cop story flows like molasses in January, its plodding pace underscoring the cast’s lack of chemistry, the monotonous visuals and TV-level plotting.
Carrie Stetko, the lone U.S. Marshal assigned to Antarctica, investigates the continent's first murder, which draws her into a shocking mystery. Now, with only three ...
Rating: R for violence, grisly images, brief strong language and some nudity
Length: 106 minutes
Released: September 11, 2009 Nationwide
Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Gabriel Macht, Columbus Short, Alex O'Loughlin, Shawn Doyle
Director: Dominic Sena
Writer: Erich Hoeber, Jon Hoeber
Trading her sexy shrink-wrap latex outfit from the “Underworld” series for a hooded winter coat, Kate Beckinsale plays Carrie Stetko, a U.S. marshal investigating the continent’s first recorded murder. The deceased, who seems to have fallen from a mountainside but had no climbing gear, is what they call “a sticker.” He’s fixed to the surface of the ice when Carrie discovers him, a frozen, inert mass. A symbol for the movie, you might say.
The film takes its title from the weather condition that whips blinding white show so furiously that you can’t see 6 inches in front of you. No horizon, no shadows, only white. Those are the conditions that many of the story’s chase scenes are shot in, and when several figures in look-alike parkas are moving in slow motion against a snow-gusting, undefined background, the tension suffers.
Dominic Sena, director of the frantic “Gone in Sixty Seconds,” seems to have misplaced his action chops. He opens the film with one of the most uninvolving airplane crashes ever recorded on film.
That accident, involving a Russian cargo plane carrying “Something Important” during the Cold War, sets the plot in motion. The corpse Carrie finds is part of a plot to recover its contents. At the same time, she is working to recover her confidence. She came to the South Pole from Miami, where she was attacked by a prisoner in her custody, with damaging effect to her career and her psyche.
We know that the scars are deep because Sena helpfully replays the incident a half dozen times. He also highlights important events by filming them with a slow zoom-in, the movie equivalent of underlining a sentence in red ink.
Beckinsale’s one moment of comedy comes early, and unintentionally. She’s barely been introduced before she gives a nod to her “Underworld” fan base by stripping off her goose-down burka and stepping into a steamy shower. She’s interrupted by a knock at the door and shouts “Just a minute.”
She doesn’t add, “I’m doing the gratuitous skin scene,” but she might as well have.
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