Whiteout [Blu-ray] [2009] [US Import]

'Whiteout' is a slasher/murder mystery thriller that was panned by critics and was a box-office failure.

The movie is based in Antarctica and follows a U.S. Deputy Marshal Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) who after discovering murder incidents, attempts to hunt down the killer.

I rented the DVD because the cast is good, the director (Dominic Sena) previously made 'Gone in Sixty Seconds', which I like and also because I love my murder mysteries.

The movie starts with a bang (action scene), setting the mood and then works on the mystery. The movie continues to unfold in a formulatic manner without becoming boring and finally ends with a twist.

The two main things that struck me was the beautiful scenery of Antarctica and the climax, which I personally did not predict. For me, the movie worked because it kept me somewhat interested and gave me what I expect from a mystery thriller, an unpredictable climax.

The flaws are the movie offers nothing new when it comes to plot, there are no jump-out-of-your-seat moments and the acting from the cast including Kate Beckinsale is below-par.

The direction provided by Dominic Sena is quite good as he managed to keep me watching the movie.

'Whiteout' is one of those movies that you should not expect much from and in return will be rewarded.

I was a bit dubious about getting this dvd becasue it got a good slating by a lot of people and critics. However, anything with Kate Beckinsale in it has to be worth a look and this is without doubt.

Basically mysterious goings on start to occur on a remote Antartic Outpost where she is the sheriff and she has to investigate strange deaths before an enormous storm hits the region.

This is a very atmospheric film thats certainly worth watching and wasnt worthy of all the abuse it got. If you like thrillers and murder mysteries, I'm certain you will enjoy this film.

Starting with a mid-air shootout on a Russian cargo plane and a spectacular crash in the Antarctic wastes, Whiteout gets off to a good start and throws in a decent hook with the discovery on the ice of the body of the continent's first murder victim half a century later, but never really rises above the okay despite all the bells and whistles it puts on its familiar murder story by setting it at the bottom of the world. Coming from Joel Silver's horror label Dark Castle there's obviously a big dark secret behind it all - though despite being based on a graphic novel it's not a supernatural one - but it's not a particularly compelling getting there. It's the kind of film with lengthy, detailed CGi establishing shots of base camps and long show-off single take tracking shots following characters through the sets and where the closest thing to introductory character development is Kate Beckinsale's U.S. Marshal having a shower and the odd laughably over-stylised flashback to a shooting in Miami while it's waiting to set up the story. It doesn't help that with Tom Skerritt's doctor and paternal sidekick the only familiar face in the underpowered and underwritten supporting cast no-one particularly stands out: they're there to move the story along, nothing more, and tend to do it somewhat anonymously.

The plot isn't a million miles away from a much less ambitious version of earlier icebound flop Bear Island (research scientists killed off by killer among them) and at times it starts to give off the odd whiff of the ending of Smilla's Sense of Snow, albeit with less of the character that helped distinguish that before it got too silly. And it's that lack of character - or even characters despite the plethora of bit players - that will make you guess one of the bad guys' identity before the first body even turns up simply because they've not gone to any trouble making more than a couple of others have anything much to do. The lack of viable suspects and a Maguffin that's been used in countless other movies does limit the film's novelty value to the location and, unfortunately one of the story's big hooks doesn't work too well on the big screen: the whiteout itself, a blizzard where the snow and wind are so heavy you can't see more than six inches ahead. Throw in the long Antarctic night as well, and a grand finale that you can't really see that much of is a bit of a problem. Let your attention drift for a couple of shots and you'll find it hard to tell which threatening figure wrapped in a Parka and goggles is trying to kill which other threatening figure wrapped in Parka and goggles with an ice pick...

In development for the best part of a decade as it was passed around from studio to studio and shelved for two years before it finally got a release to uniformly terrible reviews and bad box-office and was quickly relegated to the bargain bins of video stores, you could expect the worst, but in truth it's not a terrible or laughably bad film, just an ordinary and somewhat mediocre one. It moves along fairly briskly, albeit without any surprises, and if you're in an undemanding mood it fills the time well enough but it's nothing you particularly need to see.

The BluRay offers a decent 2.40:1 widescreen transfer with a fairly modest selection of extras: one backslapping 12-minute making of featurette, another with the writer and artist of the graphic novel gushing on the set, two perfunctory deleted scenes and a trailer.