Saturday, October 10, 2009

Whiteout *


Director: Dominic Sena
Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Gabriel Macht
Alex O'Loughlin, Shawn Doyle, Columbus Short, Tom Skerritt

US Marshal Carrie Stetko (Beckinsale), who is just three days away from resigning-of course-begins to investigate the mysterious death of a geologist.
Soon she's involved in a Cold War era conspiracy, while sorting out who she can trust in the middle of nowhere.
Enter the usual suspects: attractive, but too good to be true therefore mysterious UN operative Robert Pryce (Macht), father figure with a tendency for enigma (Skerritt), a pilot (Short) who's too nice and willing and Aussie bad boy who can't help but be interesting (O'Loughlin).
To say that nothing happens in this movie would be an understatement, the "action" sequences are one part "Scream" (minus the fun), two parts "Frosty the Snowman" as in the fact that you can't really see what's going on.
It's as if the filmmakers knew they had nothing interesting to show and tried to hide it with a snow curtain.
Of course they give us a gratuitous scene of Beckinsale in the shower and try to give her character deep psychological background.
She did something awful that's been haunting her forever and every new thing she sees reminds her of it. The grainy, ominous flashbacks are appropriately tinted for the place: orange for Florida, blue for Antarctica.
The best thing that can be said about "Whiteout" is that it had one of the most effective trailers in years. Why? Because the trailer for one doesn't give up the entire plot of the movie, in fact it makes it look as if it was an episode of "Lost" in the snow, what with mysterious nature references, bodies falling from the sky and explosions.
Sadly, the movie takes its cue from another television program and becomes "CSI:Antarctica".

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