Whiteout

Whiteout

101 Minutes






The twin successes of Road to Perdition and A History of Violence earlier this decade had the benefit of proving to studios that adaptations of comics that didn't prominently feature super heroes were a relative gold mine, ripe for excavating. The world of independent comics especially is full of mature, complex stories and those films made it more likely that graphic novels would find a home rather than be stuck in development hell. Unfortunately, Whiteout, which itself had been in production limbo since as early as 2002, may just bring that momentum to a complete halt all by its lonesome.

Based off of Greg Rucka's Eisner Award-nominated mini series of the same name, Whiteout should have been a success. Rucka's original story tapped into a tension generated from the alienation of the environment of Antarctica as well as that which springs from the paranoia of the characters themselves. In graphic novel form, the story was well-paced-- suspenseful without apparently trying, sharp without being over the top. Yet for some reason, Dominic Sena chose to direct the film adaptation as a lesson in obviousness, the twists reduced to something tonally similar to a round of Clue.

Sena, whose background unsurprisingly features the likes of Swordfish and Gone in 60 Seconds, seems to have missed the point of the graphic novel completely. The plot of Whiteout was never its strong point, focusing on U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) and her attempts to track down who's responsible for the South Pole's first murder. A downed Russian cargo plane from the peak of the Cold War is involved, with the U.N. sending Agent Robert Pryce (Gabriel Macht) to explore the potential that the cargo was related to the former Soviet Union's nuclear program. The plot is thin, but that didn't have to be the film's undoing, since the original story was more concerned with the hazards of the environment and how that makes even the simplest investigation more complex.

The film treats the environment instead as a means by which to create cheap shocks and blunt, cloudy color palettes. There are enough flying icepicks to make My Bloody Valentine 3D feel inferior and the characters have the odd tendency to silently stalk behind one another just so they can surprise one another. Worse, the dialogue is laughably bad, as though the four (!) screenwriters involved were instructed to make the audience feel like it was based off a Marvel comics imitation from the '60s rather than a noir-soaked independent gem. The characters are prone to hilarious exposition and by the numbers "can't we all get along?" interchange.

Beckinsale stands out as the worst offenders of the actors, again forcing one to wonder why she manages to be involved with so many big budget films, despite the fact that they all seem to flop. But Tom Skerritt doesn't fare much better as the grumbly, alcoholic Dr. John Fury, his performance as dialed in as it gets. It can't help much when paired with a director as untalented as Sena, though, who doesn't give his actors much to work with and makes ridiculously gratuitous scenes, such as the way Beckinsale's character is introduced by way of a softcore porn style, overly long soak in the shower after bending over in her undies, of course. A large portion of the film is also hampered by Sena's strange habit of randomly adding slow motion segments for no reason, and several climactic fights feel less like life or death situations and more a game of tug-of-war as the characters are forced to move by rope to get to each location.

Whiteout is a sad example of how not to adapt a graphic novel, standing alongside the miserable Wanted as the least competent understanding of an excellent, adventurous source. It removes all of the suspense and tension of its origin work and substitutes blunt, moronic plotting that seems to guarantee Whiteout may have a second life as a cult sensation. Where Whiteout could have been an at least tolerable hybridization of The Thing and Hitchcock suspense, it's instead just further fodder for people who think "comic book film" is just shorthand for "big dumb movie."

by Morgan Davis