Whiteout Movie Review: Frozen to Dullness in Antarctica

Whiteout is like the impending six months of darkness in Antarctica. Not with the chilling thrills, but with the total bore of staying inside a scientific research facility with only the endless stretches of Antarctic ice as companion. And in the most superficial sense, this movie can only be passable for the filmgoer without any other demands but seeing ice everywhere.

This cold film offers no concrete diversion or escape from the heat nor the cold. It ices itself as a ham-handed murder mystery set in the south pole, with a perfunctory approach to its story and its characters. The story elements struggle to survive; but unfortunately, they just melt away far from the thriller the film promises to be. The cold must have wiped out the needed skills this production requires.

It feels like one of those movies that has never progressed much beyond its interesting and promising concept. Like the isolated continent where it's set, Whiteout seems too isolated to make itself a quality piece. Like the thick ice all around, the storytelling is so dense that the film wimps out to become such an uninspired thriller amidst the many inspirational elements around it.

While the setting is considerably interesting and mesmerizing, little else about this movie is captivating. It's a whodunnit mystery set on a scientific research base in Antarctica with dullness growing as thick as the ice all over the sets. For all its frozen bodies, blood, assaults with ice axes, and struggle with killer winds and weather that all pique your interest for its cold and windy setting, Whiteout turns out to be a pale imitation of the thriller it's been trying to be: with a twist you see coming a continent away. The central mystery is limp. The mystical setting is wasted with a lifeless pedestrian plot that could actually be set anywhere.

There's wonderful potential for such white vistas embodying both metaphorical emptiness and mysterious oblivion. And it could have been a great setting for an ambitious film with an already given A-list star at helm. So what went wrong? Script, direction, sound, music. And for a solid domino effect to it, performances. The characters don't translate well. The film is filled with mere panicky zooms and badly staged actions. The random forensic gross-outs are half-baked. The dialogues put unwelcome commentaries so overdone that no event occurs without a character telling you what you already see. The redundancy is even worsened by the overworked soundtrack telling you for the nth time what is supposed to happen next and even dictate to you what you should feel or think about the very scene you're watching.

The sub-standard work is but a missed opportunity. This generic snowbound thriller features blowing winds averaging around 100 miles per hour, but it just doesn't really throw the audience towards genuinely thrilling moments. Its worst offense is assuming that the audience is so dumb that you will actually be shocked and entertained by characters merely wearing snowsuits and slashing out people, then finding out in the end, how lame the whole thing is - with all the utter lack of excitement and witty twist ending. Hobbled by a ruinously insufficient chills, and intrigue, it grows to become an increasingly ludicrous mess from the beginning until the ending. And even if you suspend your disbelief, the sub-standard CGI of planes, among other things, even pulls you down farther the thick white ice.

The cast delivers numb performances with stereotypical, one-dimensional characters that are actually devoid of utter personality. It merely settles to put some feasting eyes on Kate Beckinsale showcasing her almost naked body ready for a hot bathing scene, then showing her curves in tempting blurs from inside the shower within the first five minutes of the film. Yes, that's the mainstream sellout at work. Beckinsale as U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko is glossed over with her skin perfectly holding up to the sub-zero temperature all the way.

What's missing from Whiteout is the pervasive sense of paranoia that you'd expect, or hope for, from a thriller set in the coldest and most isolated land mass in the planet. And its intriguing setting and storyline could have been gripping if a more developed story with quality script and smart direction replaced the spoon-fed lines of its dull characters, the poor camera work, the lame musical score, and the second-rate Hollywood CGI.