Film Reviews

Whiteout

• Rating:
• Director: Dominic Sena
• Starring: Columbus Short
• Details: US/96mins (15A)

Playing like one of the many procedural cop shows currently hogging airtime on your tellybox, Whiteout has a solid enough set-up, but is far too bland to register as anything other than a time wasting exercise. Director Dominic Sena does deserve credit for managing to get star Kate Beckinsale in her underwear in a movie set in Antarctica, but that scene is unfortunately not an hour and a half long. Instead, we're treated to lots of snow, a lot of people looking cold whilst standing in the snow, and a couple of frozen dead bodies.
Beckinsale's US Marshall, Carrie Stetko, has been stationed in the South Pole for two years, having suffered a traumatic experience involving a suspect in Miami while she was placed there. She's gone down south for the isolation and lack of gun-toting drug barons, y'see, and gets plenty of that until someone manages to spot a dead body a few miles from their makeshift town. As different members of the base present themselves as suspects, Stetko must figure out who she can trust, and who is capable of impaling some randomers with a pick-axe.
Part slasher movie, part whodunit, and all mediocre, you can still see the sense in Beckinsale choosing such a part. Carrie is a strong, emotionally wounded woman, surrounded by men in the middle of nowhere. It's also a genre film, so has a built-in audience and isn't over-reliant on her untested star wattage. It's just a shame that the production itself doesn't really have a strong enough mystery to keep the viewer engaged. Four screenwriters on any production is never a good thing, and their resulting work is patchy at best. Clichés are rampat, and red herrings are introduced just to suspect them later on in the movie, but the characters serve no purpose other than to distract.
In a week saturated with new releases, Whiteout is destined to disappear quicker than someone who steps out into the raging snow storm that ends the movie. A whole lot of nothing.... Just with some snow.

Review by Mike Sheridan