White, white, and more white. Here’s hoping you like, make that love, the color white if you decide to go see the bland and boring thriller ‘Whiteout,’ because that is about the only satisfaction you might derive from it. The film is plodding and slugishly paced, and that’s before the so-called suspense kicks in. It only goes down from there.
The film begins in a Russian cargo plane in 1957. As it passes over Antarctica, the pilot and co-pilot begin killing the Russian guards they are carrying. A rather large gun battle breaks out, everyone ends up getting shot, and the plan crashes into the snowy fields below. Jump ahead to modern day where the crew of an outpost in the Antarctic are beginning preperations to leave for the Winter. A dead body comes to the attention of US Marshall Carrie Stetko, played by Kate Beckinsale. With the aid of a UN operative, played by Gabriel Macht, and the wise, old doctor character who serves as her mentor, played by Tom Skerrit, Stetko uncovers a murderer’s plot and the mysterious cargo the Russian plane in the beginning of the film was carrying.
Based on a graphic novel, the screenplay for ‘Whiteout’ was put together by four, different people, never a very good sign. To say that the screenplay moves in fits and starts is putting it lightly. The pacing is all off with large chunks of dialogue and exposition filling in where thrills and chills maybe might have been more interesting. After the opening moments on the Russian plane, there are very few sequences in the film, beginning, middle, or end, that even try to raise the intensity levels. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to find that there are more flashbacks than suspense scenes found in ‘Whiteout.’ Some of the flashbacks, at least, attempt to serve a purpose, as the job that sent Stetko to the Antarctic develops throughout the film. It doesn’t really matter that anyone who’s paying attention can piece it all together long before it’s played out for us. That covers the flashbacks that actually seem fitting. There are also countless flashbacks to scenes we’ve already seen or they serves as visuals over someone describing something that happened to them. The flashbacks in ‘Whiteout,’ of which there are probably more than flakes of snow, offer nothing and end up dragging every amount of progression within the film down to a grinding halt.
The relationships between the characters is paper thin, nearly nonexistent in most cases. Macht’s UN operative isn’t in the film ten minutes before a love angle between he and Beckinsale is hinted at. It goes nowhere, and you question why it was ever there in the first place. In fact, the way the screenwriters handle pretty much every aspect to this mystery and thriller is misjudged. When the killer is finally revealed to us, it’s as if the screenwriters were tired of hiding his identity, and the actual reveal is handled off-camera. Not even a ‘Point Break’-esque scene in the film’s final moments can save the nosedive the film takes very early on.
The direction from Dominic Sena isn’t anything special, either. Four people worked on the screenplay, but it feels like just as many people worked behind the camera. Some shots track smoothly. Other shots use the frantic jerkiness that, to my belief, was established long ago to only work for Paul Greengrass. Still other shots are marred by Godawful special effects, most of which are, surprise, surprise, computer generated. Robert Zemeckis proved long ago that CG snow is noticeably fake and takes the viewer out of the film almost instantly. Sena simply doesn’t seem to care what looks fake or not, and it ends up feeling like very little in the film is practical when the special effects are concerned. The action and suspense scenes are handled very poorly to say the least. It’s difficult to differentiate actors when they’re all wearing North Face jackets and thick goggles anyway. Sena shoots the actors in such a way that it is often impossible to tell one from another, even if half of their faces are completely exposed to the elements, a fact that is laughable when you consider the temperatures within the film are -50 or less. When the action does kick in, it all gets squandered by the combination of poor camera work and ridiculously bogus snow flurries. The tension in the much of the film’s action scenes stems from watching a rope that disappears into white nothingness and wondering if it’s ever going to move, not exactly edge-of-your-seat material.
Sena does do his job handling his actors in the numerous scenes that are dialogue driven. Beckinsale, Skerrit, and Macht all do the best with what they have, even though Macht seems the victim of some kind of ADR monster. Much of his dialogue seems to have been looped in after the film was already shot, and it’s horribly noticeable. Horrible post ADR work aside, the performances by the leads can only be described as satisfactory. Nobody is particularly bad, but no one is all that great, either. One scene near the middle where Skerrit’s doctor is treating one of Stetko’s wounds is somewhat moving, but you can’t help but wonder how much more emotional it could have been had we cared about anything else going on in the film. As it is, it’s a single scene with some decent acting. Nothing more.
And, really, that is all ‘Whiteout’ leaves us. Not caring. There are so many cold-related adjectives that could describe the film. The plot moves like an iceberg. Every aspect about the film is vanilla. There’s nothing searing going on in this thriller on or off the screen. And all of this is without really trying, people. Perhaps the screenwriter, director, and even producers behind ‘Whiteout’ could have put a little effort into it themselves. About the only facet of interest in terms of ‘Whiteout’ is that Warner Brothers decided to release it the weekend after Labor Day, a time when wearing white is considered extremely tacky. Tacky would have been a welcome sight in ‘Whiteout.’ Tacky is interesting. There’s nothing interesting to note in regards to this film.
