Whiteout

I think it’s pretty well-established that I’ll watch almost anything with Kate Beckinsale in it, plus WHITEOUT has the added bonus of being based on a graphic novel written by Greg Rucka that I’d read several years ago. Also, it’s set at an Antarctic research station, a similar setting to fiction I’ve enjoyed like Alistair MacLean’s ICE STATION ZEBRA and John W. Campbell’s “Who Goes There?”, although I think maybe those were set in the Arctic, not the Antarctic. But hey, a blizzard’s a blizzard.

Anyway, in WHITEOUT, Beckinsale is hard-nosed U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko, who is about to head home from the station after being there two years. Winter is about to set in, so everybody who’s not staying over for the next six months is about to leave on the last transport plane. There’s a storm coming in, too, which will complicate things.

So what better time to have a series of murders and a mysterious masked killer stalking the station, on top of a dangerous mystery that stretches back more than fifty years?

WHITEOUT is fairly effective most of the time, although the exterior scenes, with wind and blowing snow and people running around bundled up in parkas and such, are a little hard to follow because you can’t tell who’s who or what they’re doing. That’s a minor complaint compared to the fact that the main bad guy might as well be wearing a neon sign on his back announcing his identity, and then when you get the final revelation of what’s been going on, it makes no sense. At least it didn’t to me. But the movie is still a reasonably entertaining way to kill a couple of hours, if that’s all you’re looking for.