Film is Pwn

I realize that I am one of the few humans capable of feeling disappointment when a film turns out not to be terrible.  In this regard, Whiteout has disappointed me terribly.

Just out on DVD, Whiteout was a relatively big-budget thriller starring Kate Beckinsale.  It appeared in theaters for approximately 17 minutes, barely long enough for it to be panned by critics and irritate the two guys who wanted to see.  One of those men was me, the other happened to be the mother of the film’s director.

In fact, so universal was the disdain for Whiteout that it actually appeared on RottenTomatoes.com’s 100 worst rated films of the 2000’s decade.  RottenTomatoes scores are based on a compiled consensus of positive/negative grades given by film critics and general movie fans.  Whiteout barely beat out Mariah Carey’s opus Glitter on the list.  Whiteout scored a paltry 7% positive on the tomato-meter.  For a point-of-comparison, the brainless, Gerard Butler action film Gamer that also just came out on DVD — and happens to be the only film of the decade that both my brother and I walked out of — scored 29%.

Being a glutton for bad movies, I had to check Whiteout out.

The premise of Whiteout is actually an intriguing one.  There is a scientific outpost in the arctic wasteland that is Antarctica.   As the outpost prepares to shutdown for “the winter” (isn’t it always winter in Antarctica?) a dead body is discovered.  ‘Twasn’t an accident, suspects the U.S. Marshall (Beckinsale) on site, who opens the first murder investigation in Antarctica history.  Who killed who and why?  Who’s going to get killed next and why?  How does it involve the contents of a Russian plane that crashed decades earlier?  Who let the dogs out?

So instead of the murder-mystery-thriller story featuring a cast of characters trapped in a house, a resort, a boat, or some other remote locale, Whiteout uses an entire continent to create a sense of isolation.  Granted, it’s a continent where at times you die in mere seconds if you venture outside unprotected.

The negatives to the film are plentiful if you choose to dwell on them.  Other than Beckinsale as the lead and reliable character actor Tom Skerritt as “Doc,” the cast is forgettable.  There’s a death-defying escape that defies logic or explanation.  The criticism on the TV show At The Movies was that the plot moves slow, you can’t tell what’s happening in some scenes where characters fight in blinding arctic conditions known as a “whiteout,” and there aren’t any penguins.

While I must confess there are no penguins, I sheepishly admit I kinda liked Whiteout.  Not enough to fully recommend you spend money on it, but when it’s on TV give it a shot and see for yourself.  I dug the locale (Canada standing in for Antartica) and the story (based on a comic book, believe it or not) held my interest.  I even liked Kate Beckinsale’s plucky heroine.  While I must stress it isn’t a “good movie,” it is rather “an all right, I can watch this movie.”  Low expectations certainly help.

A side-note: Perhaps feeling shame over the film’s critical performance, the marketing team has attempted to disguise the nature of Whiteout.   The DVD cover features a close-up photograph of the lovely Kate Beckinsale in exaggerated black and white.  Based on the picture, I would surmise that Whiteout is the tale of a blind albino attempting to make her way in the cruel world of modeling.  While this is an intriguing premise similar to my unsold screenplay, Rhonda The Pale Supermodel Who Fell Off the Runway, is not what Whiteout is about.

Watching the trailer after watching the movie is rather astounding, and it’s obvious they were trying to promote a different movie than what the filmmakers made. The chain events in the trailer after the line, “we hit something big” are so misleading it is ridiculous. This is a “murder mystery” and they are trying to make it look like it’s about an extraterrestrial invasion of some variety.