REVIEW: Whiteout (2009)
Whiteout
Rated: R
Runtime: 101 minutes
Starring: Kate Beckinsale
My rating: 2 stars
—
—
Watch I Know What You Did Last Summer meet “CSI” meet the South Pole in Whiteout, the year’s most basic, boring, anticlimactic thriller. Now in theaters.
Sound interesting? It’s not.
Whiteout is bad because of the script.
Whiteout is bad because of the wooden acting from every major character, including Kate Beckinsale as Carrie Stetko.
Whiteout is bad because it tries to fool the audience, but the audience lost interest 40 minutes prior to the stupid twist.
Whiteout is bad because instead of car chases, it shows one person running away from a killer on foot while both are tethered to a rope because otherwise they would blow away in the howling wind. To add “drama” to the rope-chase scenes, the characters must, get this, unhook and reattach themselves every 10 feet or so when there’s an eye-post guiding the rope.
Oh man, you better re-tether yourself quick, Kate. The killer might get you. Yawn.
Shall I continue, or have you already stopped reading?
Stetko is a reassigned US Marshall, now stationed at the South Pole after a shady past. A body shows up on the ice, apparently murdered. It is the first murder on Antarctica. She has to investigate.
Her team finds a buried soviet cargo plane that crashed 50 years ago. A few boxes were broken into. What’s missing is only speculation.
And then there’s a whole bunch of stalking, other murders and a witch hunt to find the killer. All this happens while a monster storm is brewing and the South Pole is being evacuated for the winter. Don’t let the killer get away!
When it’s all said and done no one in the audience cares who lives, who dies, what happens or why it happens.
The narrative is unimaginative, uninspired and routine. Girl finds body; body was murdered; must find killer; killer has motive; oh my God, a twist.
The problem is that without really knowing why the killer is killing until the very end and what is missing from the boxes, the audience has no emotional tie to the plot. Caring about Stetko isn’t enough. There needed to be more reason to keep watching, and there simply wasn’t.
It’s a disappointing product considering its trailer. It’s slow to develop, pointless when it does and instantly forgettable when the credits role. Two stars.
—
Follow me on Netflix and see what I'm watching, rating and exclusive lists of personal favorites. Just click "Save to Faves."
—
Where it's playing:
Canton/PotsdamSHOWTIMES
Watertown SHOWTIMES
