WHITEOUT - An Apt Name for a Mistake of a Film

WHITEOUT is a thriller based on the Greg Rucka graphic novel. It tells the tale of a Federal marshal investigating the first murder in Antarctica. Good stuff. Aside from perhaps the vaguest and most misconceived ad campaign in the history of film (honestly, you have no idea what the movie is about, what genre it's in, or the fact that it's based on a graphic novel, just that it stars Kate Beckinsale and snow), WHITEOUT also has a pretty mediocre story and script.

BLIZZARD FULL OF SPOILERS BELOW

One of the film's biggest weaknesses is its arc and theme, which are both about trust. Carrie Stetko (Beckinsale) winds up in the dead post of Antarctica after a mishap, when she killed her partner who betrayed her. Now she doesn't trust anyone and has retreated from the world. So you'd think the film -- and the action sequences -- would be about her learning how to trust again. And that the lesson she learns will be integral in helping her solve the case. Not so much. In fact, the person she trusts most turns out to be part of the whole scheme behind the murder (surprise, surprise). And she never really learns much of anything about trust at all. This is a tremendous opportunity wasted.

One way to have fixed this is to have Carrie turn on her new partner from the UN, Price. She thinks he's part of the scheme or otherwise untrustworthy. And at a critical moment, she wounds him (could be shooting him, could be with a knife or ice-axe), resulting in an injury that plagues him the rest of the film. She learns that he is to be trusted, only now, he can't really help her out because the injury she inflicted on him slows him down. This would help in some of the critical scenes like the chase during the whiteout. And this would be a direct consequence of her trust issues -- they literally endanger her life.

Another weakness is the general stupidity of the bad guys' plot. They throw one of their wounded members out of an airplane. So his mangled corpse is found in the middle of nowhere, prompting a murder investigation from both the US Marshal Service and the UN. And since there are relatively few people in Antarctica, it's pretty easy to trace the victim back to the group of geologists he was working with. Common sense would dictate that the best thing to do would be for the bad guys to either drop the body down an ice crevasse somewhere or leave it inside the plane under the ice. Either way, they could just report the guy missing and nobody would ever find him.

The script also fails to maximize some inherent dramatic situations. There are some potentially cool chases outside the various ice stations. These are unique because the participants are battling the elements as well as each other. And they have to stay clipped into guide ropes to avoid getting lost in the snow. The first one, where Stetko is chased by the unknown bad guy, is great. But the film later repeats the chase. Which in itself is old hat, but is also undone a bit by the fact that one bad guy (with an ice axe) is chasing two armed law enforcement agents. Obviously, this reduces the threat substantially.

Likewise, Carrie loses two fingers on her right hand to frostbite. This is played for emotion, and we see she has a hard time buttoning her sweater. But it's never played for conflict or as an obstacle. An obvious place for this would be in showing how the wound affects Stetko's coordination in her gun hand. When she gets in the field and faces a bad guy, she literally can't shoot straight and her life is in danger for it.

Finally, it's far too obvious who the bad guys are. In the beginning, the film shows us Stetko has a contentious relationship with one of the pilots. By the time the story rolls around to talking about how the murder victim must have been tossed out of a plane, it's obvious who the pilot will be. Side note -- it's also completely unnecessary that the pilot turns out to be Australian and faking an American accent the whole time. Why? Presumably when he signed on for a lengthy Antarctica mission berth, he didn't know that he'd stumble upon a five-decades long lost Russian cargo plane carrying diamonds. This is a bit of unnecessary silliness.

And the film's big "reveal," that Stetko's beloved Doc is part of the evil cabal, can be seen coming a mile away. The main reason this reveal is telegraphed is that every single person on the base evacuates except for Carrie, her pilot Delphi, who has been stabbed and left for dead by the Australian pilot (and thus is not a suspect), Price, whom we've seen get attacked by the Australian pilot (and thus is not a suspect), and Doc. So since the movie's not over and Carrie still can't find the cargo, odds are 100% it's gonna be Doc behind it.

The script doesn't even bother to have a confrontation between Carrie and Doc. Doc just apologizes sort of and then wanders out in the snow to die watching the Southern Lights. Which is rather anticlimactic. And then for some reason, Stetko emails her boss withdrawing her resignation and requesting transfer to a warmer clime. Why? She still doesn't trust people. She didn't figure out who the bad guys were. And her best friend turned out to betray her (like the incident that scarred her in the first place).

The whole movie left me cold. Pun intended.