What Whiteout?

Living in a tropical country such as Malaysia, where the cold comes in the form of rainy seasons and the threat of flood, for Whiteout to happen, which is the title of the new movie by Kate Beckinsdale, was something I cannot imagine happening to me. Whiteout is like snow blindness where you can only see is white (which of course from the snow). It is so harsh that you can lose a limb just if you forgot to wear a golve.

The movie is about Kate Beckinsdale character who was introduced going through a kid of a building which is where people on science expedition in Antartica live. She is a police on her final leg of assignment. She has 72 hours before the last plane leave to a retirement back in the normal world. The place was also closing for the winter (as in a harsh winter in contrast with just a normal winter). She has a friend who is an older doctor who is her friend and she confided in him on many things.

The opening scene saw her walking around before going into her room and then she stripped to take a shower where we can see her silhouette through the shower door. My wife asked me, why do they need to have that scene? Any relevance to the movie? Actually no, except maybe to show how many layer of clothing you have to wear in Antratica as it is a very cold place - Not really a good answer huh? So, someone may want to show off her body - A better Hollywood answer.

Anyway, 2 minutes in, a radio call comes in and it was about a dead body found somewhere our there. They flew in to go investigate it. When the doctor checks the body, the only explanation they can come up with is that he was murdered. That sets the tone for the movie as there never have been any murder in Antartica ever. Before you know it, there were more than 1 murder. Then a few other character were introduced and the whole movie you will have a kind of a guess-who-is-the-real-murderer kind of thriller.

The movie is only okay as you cannot actually do an action thriller much in a place as cold as Antartica. I remembered a movie where Robin Williams was a police trying to solve a murder in Iceland where the season had changed to 23 hours of sunlight and in that one at least there was a real town. In this, all you can see is ice and just by looking at it you can feel the cold. Kate Beckinsdale still cannot carry a thriller like this yet although she had been the main character in Underworld. What I know is horror movie such as The Thing and that vampire movie in the Arctic worked well in the cold.

Go watch Whiteout if you want a change of weather. See the extreme cold and harsh weather. Someone in the film said "Welcome to the desert of a different kind".