Whiteout – Review

Based on a much better graphic novel, Whiteout has a good setup and some okay qualities, but falls short on story. This seems strange to me, considering the source material is basically a storyboard layout of a great plot and enjoyable mystery tale, so that should translate easily to the screen. Instead, we got this film, which struggles with intrigue and pacing.

After an eventful opening in the past, we snap to 2009 and the coldest, most isolated land mass on the planet, Antarctica. A plane flies into the Amundsen-Scott Base, a U.S. scientific research facility, with a winter storm on the way and -55° Celsius temperatures. This blizzard means the staff is swapping a bit early to escape being trapped.

With newbies coming in, headed out are the crew at the end of their long stay shifts. This includes U.S. Marshall Carrie Stetko (Beckinsale), done with a two-year stint. She talks with another about to leave, Dr. John Fury (Skerritt), letting him know how excited she is to catch some sun finally.

As she readies to finally exodus from the ice, her plans are thrown into disarray as a mysterious dead body is found way out in the ice with no gear, setting off a quest for answers. If there’s a body that means a federal investigation is needed, and Carrie may be stuck for the whole winter, again!

Whiteout is just too basic at a few things to have it stand out as a solid thriller. It has a competent setup and is mostly adequately presented, but after the opening act things get a bit off the rails. I typically quite enjoy crime thrillers of this nature, so it is disappointing to have this one fall flat.

The acting is sufficient but doesn’t bring much emotion to the surface, and the direction is by the numbers. This could have been okay with an extremely interesting script, but after the first act it devolves into a basic plot. It feels a bit stiff atmospherically and the mystery is stifled by a lack of viewer engagement, probably due to underwhelming dialogue.

I also quite like the source material and author of that, so it’s too bad his work wasn’t better represented. It’s definitely not the worst movie ever, but it is not the slick and competent thriller that it could have been with the right script. The elements were all there, but the final results are just too bland.