Whiteout
Going into this movie, I was under the impression that it was a very scary movie. At least I thought that is what I read. I wish I had zero expectations and I probably would have really liked it. However, I kept waiting for it to get scary. It had intense moments and some good jumps, but it is far from scary. It is more like a mystery/thriller that you would watch on Lifetime. I love some of the Lifetime movies so that’s not meant to be a negative remark. It just wasn’t what I was expecting so I found the story to drag on and on and on.
I am a big fan of Gabriel Macht and always wonder why he doesn’t do more projects. I think he’s a fantastic actor and he can definitely hold his own no matter who his co-star may be. Pairing him with Kate Beckinsale was a great casting choice. However, they seemed to have lost some of the chemistry in the writing. Maybe that was due to Kate’s character originally being written as a man. There was a lot of potential in having Kate and Gabriel lead this story and for some reason it fell flat. Not to either of their fault, I just think it was in the story telling or the editing.
Spoilers ahead.
Kate plays a tough marshal who is investigating a murder in Antarctica. Her character is wounded from a past incident and there were a few too many flashbacks to that incident. The audience didn’t need to be fed so much of the past to understand where the story was going. I think one flashback and then the full story at the end would have sufficed. It was hard watching Kate play a marshal for some reason. She’s so tiny compared to the men working at the station that she seems too vulnerable. I know she can play tough well, so I’m not sure why they had her seem so ‘breakable’ in this role.
The chase scene through the snow between Kate’s character and the killer was intense. There were enough twists and turns throughout the story to keep the audience guessing as to who the killer actually was. I wasn’t surprised but I didn’t exactly guess the ending. But, there were many instances where the dialogue dumbed down the audience. It became rather silly during a few scenes and we laughed at the characters trying to explain something so completely obvious. For instance there is a scene in the plane where Kate’s character looks at a dead man with a bullet hole in his head and says something about thinking he must have been shot. We waited for one of the other characters to say ‘you think?’. But, since there wasn’t any additional humor in the scenes it was a ridiculous explanation. Sometimes less is more.
The cast was a mix of great actors. Gabriel and Kate, even as leads, were able to fall into the ensemble with Tom Skerritt, Columbus Short, and Alex O’Loughlin. The scenery was beautiful even at its most desolate. With exception to a few long drags of story it was a good film. It was my own fault for expecting something like 30 Days of Night. It was a good mystery story and had I not expected something more I think I would have really enjoyed it. For nothing else, I would have enjoyed watching a great group of actors come to life as their characters.
My one pet peeve was that they had nudity for the sake of nudity. It was laughable. If you’re going to have a shower scene in a movie, you had better have Norman Bates standing on the other side of the wall.
Rated R for violence, grisly images, brief strong language and some nudity.
