Whiteout   Starring: Kate Beckinsale, Gabriel Macht, Columbus Short and Tom Skerritt Optimum Home Entertainment RRP: £15.99 OPTD1674 Certificate: 15 Available 25 January 2010

With only three days to go until her Antarctic base is set to close for the six months of winter night, Marshal Carrie Stetko finds that she has to investigate a dead body found on the ice. The first Antarctic murder is a strange thing itself, but Carrie's investigation leads her to a mystery which has been long hidden under the ice, a mystery which is still worth killing for...

WARNING - CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Whiteout (2009 - 1 hr, 36 min, 32 sec) is a thriller, and I use the term very loosely here, directed by Dominic Sena (Kalifornia (1993), Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000)). The film was based on a graphic novel.

The movie stars Kate Beckinsale as Carrie, Tom Skerritt as Dr. John Fury and Gabriel Macht as Robert Pryce. The real shame about this film is that it could have been much more. It has the location, the hostile and forbidding environment of Antarctica, which is both beautiful and deadly. It has a good cast, which, whilst they won’t rip your heart out have all appeared in better films.

The basic premise of the film is that the base is starting to shut down for the long winter, a winter which is so cold it will kill you in seconds, so when a dead body turns up Carrie is against the clock to find out what happened. There are a few twists and turns along the way, but anyone who has seen more than a couple of films in a similar vein will work out who the villain is. Kate is the slightly tortured Marshall wanting to get away from it all, Gabriel is the slightly dodgy government agent and Tom Skerritt is playing a minor role as the doctor. Excuse me, but if you want to hide the identity of the villain don’t give the role to a well known and respected actor and expect the audience to be surprised when he plays a pivotal role in the story.

This is really the story of the film, a catalogue of lost opportunities, action sequences are somehow not as exciting as they should be. The ‘who did it’ part has Skerritt wearing a neon sign and the whole thing falls a little flat. It’s a shame really as it has the ingredients of a good thriller, but the blame for the mishandling of the film has to be placed at the director feet, which is odd as he created a very tense thriller with Kalifornia, even if the ending was a bit naff.

The DVD does have a few extras, starting with Whiteout - The Coldest Thriller Ever (11 min, 32 sec) with everyone complaining how cold the shoot was.

Whiteout - From Page to Screen (11 min, 34 sec) looks at the film's transition from graphic novel to film with contributions from the original author (Greg Rucka) and artist (Steve Lieber), which gives a little more background to the character of Carrie.

The disc is rounded off with some deleted scenes (4 min, 11 sec), none of which will be missed in the film and the original theatrical trailer (2 min, 02 sec).

You have a choice of 2.0 stereo or a preferable Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, both with optional English subtitles. The film is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 with a pretty good picture.

So, in the end it’s not a bad film, but its not as good as it could have been.

5

Charles Packer