Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
9/23/09
Given
how much time we spend lamenting that they don't make 'em like the used
to, it's worthwhile from time to time to be reminded that some genres and
styles have been rightly put out to pasture. For example, the pre-Shane
Black crime thriller. Back in the day, Dirty Harry and company would
be faced with some crime or other, spend two hours grimly and methodically
gathering evidence while pausing from time to time to get shot at and told
they're off the case, and then finally discover the culprit, usually someone
close to them. Lethal Weapon turned this paradigm on its'
ear with its' emphasis on comedy and male bonding, and even once the Buddy
Movie had become passe, its' predecessor had been successfully exiled to
television (where its' format makes up 95% of the CBS Prime Time schedule).
But, alas, the good folks at Dark Castle Entertainment thought old school
crime thrillerism would be the perfect prism through which to adapt Greg
Rucka and Steve Lieber's 1998 graphic novel Whiteout. So,
while it has the novelty of a female protagonist and an Antarctic setting,
Domenic Sena's film version trudges humorlessly through 100-odd minutes
of stupefying boredom as US Marshall Kate Beckinsale seeks the least interesting
possible resolution to the first murder on the icy continent. Hang
on to your fingers, it's gonna be a chilly ride.
1957:
a Soviet cargo plane flies over Antarctica. The Pilot (Bashar Rahal)
walks back to speak to three guards in the back. He opens fire on
them, killing only one before a full-fledged firefight breaks out that
kills everyone on board and leaves the plane to crash, and the mysterious
locked container they fought over remains unclaimed. Present day:
the winter is coming, and a seasonal shift change is imminent at one of
the continent's many International research centers. It's all fun
and games for the departing crew, and no one's happier to leave than US
Marshall Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale). She's ready to leave the
service after an unsatisfying tour handling misdemeanors while hiding from
her memories of a case gone horribly wrong in Miami. Her best friend
there, Doc (Tom Skerritt) has also made the surprising choice to hang it
up, resolving to return to the states and meet a Granddaughter he never
knew. But their plans are disrupted by a grisly discovery outside
the base, a crushed body that seems to have fallen from a great height.
The victim is identified as a worker at a nearby base that searches for
asteroids. When Carrie heads there with pilot Delfy (Columbus Short)
looking for answers, she instead finds another dead body and a masked assailant
who tries to kill her. After he's gone (and one of her hands is left
badly frozen), another stranger shows up: United Nations agent Robert
Pryce (Gabriel Macht). He tells them that there's reason to believe
the crashed plane is carrying nuclear materials the murderer might be prepared
to sell on the black market. They don't have much time: the
clock is ticking toward the last plane out, and a massive winter storm
is on the way.
Warner
Bros. ads and trailers for Whiteout do their best to suggest some
kind of sci-fi or horror angle, but the movie you actually get couldn't
be more grounded in cold, dull reality. All right, I suppose it IS
unwilling to concede any affect of temperatures over 50 degrees below zero
on any inch of Beckinsale's flawless skin that doesn't later need to be
amputated, and even here in Pennsylvania, that's pure science fiction.
What makes this promotional strategy doubly dishonest is that it's hard
to imagine anything more mundane and unexciting than what turns out to
be in that Russian case. Even the movie's own characters (most notably
Pryce with his nuclear terror scenarios) think it's something better than
what they finally get. Here's a hint (SPOILER ALERT!):
had the movie been released in the 80's, the title would have taken advantage
of the double meaning of the word “Ice”. Speaking of the 80's, it's
not so much that the repeated flashbacks to “what happened in Miami” are
ridiculous in and of themselves, but like the movie's central mystery,
they lead to a lot less than one might expect, and get way too much screen
time, making the relentless need to switch back and forth between freezing
Kate and sweating Kate all the more pointless. Sonny Crockett lived
with more than that every single week.
Sci-fi
aside, for a movie set at a scientific facility on a continent hardly any
viewer will ever see, Whiteout is desperately low on science fact.
You know we're in for a bumpy ride when an opening title feels the need
to clarify exactly what Antarctica is, and later dialog like “The storm
is approximately only 500 miles away,” doesn't help matters. We watch
scientists do a neat trick where they pour whiskey on core samples and
they bubble like something out of Dr. Frankenstein's lab, but I had to
look up the reason why (gases trapped in the ancient ice) online.
The setting does provide for a few novel sights, but while it's a cool
IDEA to have a fight between people who need to cling to a tether line
whenever they're outside or risk being blown away by the antarctic winds,
in practice, it's a lot like people fighting in those giant blow-up sumo
wrestler costumes: slow and silly.
Even
when his movies aren't great (Swordfish, Kalifornia), Domenic
Sena traditionally lets his actors out to play (the spunky performances
are the most important reason Gone in 60 Seconds worked).
But the best you can say about anybody in Whiteout is that a few
of the actors DON'T get ground down by their material. Skerritt is
an old pro at rascally mentors, and he brings the movie to life whenever
he can (he and Beckinsale have solid chemistry). Short turns his
pilot into the movie's only genuine human being. Keep an eye on him
(I'm really looking forward to his starring role in December's Armored),
I suspect what he achieved here was harder than it looks. As I mentioned,
Beckinsale's good with Skerritt (and a scene where he performs some unfortunate
battlefield surgery on her belongs in a better movie), and overall she's
not so much bad as just adequate in a movie that needed a lot more out
of its' star. Macht gets eaten alive by his need to remain a suspect:
Pryce never emerges as any kind of character precisely because he's always
acting so darn sneaky for no apparent reason (well, there is a reason,
but it has nothing to do with who he is as a person and everything to do
with how obvious the killer would be if he didn't keep throwing himself
in front of that fact like a human shield).
*****SPOILER
ALERT: KILLER TO BE GIVEN AWAY BELOW***** But, seriously, how
could we not guess? Perennial Future TV Star Alex O'Loughlin turns
up for a moment in one of the opening scenes to let us know he's a jerk
and then disappears while a masked killer is on the loose. Gee, who
could that masked man POSSIBLY be? Of course, that can't be all there
is to it, because the cliches of the Pre-Shane Black Crime Thriller pretty
much demand a scene where the hero confronts someone and asks “How could
you do this to me? We were friends!” Gee, who would Carrie
feel really betrayed by? Man, there's so many suspects... And,
of course, Whiteout inevitably goes to each and every place you
expect it to and does so in the least interesting way it can summon.
Here's a question: why is it a violation of The Hero's Code to let
someone who's clearly not going to commit any future murders Get Away With
It, but not a violation to let an old man walk out into Zero Degrees Kelvin
to avoid the shame of arrest? Just asking.*****END OF SPOILERS*****
Whiteout
brings some quality production values to bear, and credit to John Frizzell
for a score that refuses to concede for a moment that nothing exciting
is happening. But while many entertaining movies have stories this
rudimentary, all of them find their way around it through lively characters,
relentless action or off-the-wall humor. You'll find none of that
here, just a lot of stoic actors and snow. Sometimes there's good
reason why they don't make 'em like they used to. |
