Whiteout 2009 Film Directed by Dominic Sena

A US Deputy Marshall Tracks a Killer in Antarctica

Sep 16, 2009

A pilot discovers a body on the ice, and US Marshall begins the hunt for the killer. But time is running out as a storm looms on the horizon and winter approaches.

Antarctica is the most isolated landmass on the planet and has no permanent population. There has never been a murder on the continent, until now. US Deputy Marshall Carrie Stetko has only three days to catch a killer before the winter sets in and those left on the base are trapped there for the six months.

The film opens with a group of Russians onboard a plane flying over Antarctica. After a brief discussion with the pilot (Bashar Rahal), the co-pilot (Julian Cain) goes into the back compartment and kills one of three men. The other two men attack the co-pilot and during a shootout, everyone ends up dead and the plane crashes.

In the present US Deputy Marshall Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) is called from a US Research Base to the sight of a body lying on the ice. She, her bases’ doctor John Fury (Tom Skerritt) and a pilot named Delfyhead (Columbus Short) head out into the middle of nowhere to examine the body. Her investigation reveals that the man was murdered and his killer is still on the loose. After answering a call to another outpost she is attacked by a masked man who has already killed someone else. She eludes the killer, and falls unconscious. She wakes to find a man claiming to be a UN Operative named Robert Pryce (Gabriel Macht) at the outpost.

Together Stetko, Pryce and Delfyhead work to uncover the identity of the killer before an approaching storm hits and they are marooned for six months.

A Pointless Film

Whiteout is a film in which nothing really happens, and is billed as a mystery/thriller. The trailer made it look as though the film was about some kind of monster or creature lurking within the snow storm that picks off the base’s personnel one after another. Films with a similar theme can be magnificent examples of sci-fi chillers (a primary example being John Carpenter’s The Thing). However, Whiteout quickly seems to slip into a slasher film in which the hapless heroen is chased relentlessly through a Russian Outpost by a masked assailant before returning to plodding tedium as the killer mysteriously disappears.

Director Dominic Sena seems to be trying to increase tension by introducing Pryce at a time when the audience are expecting to see the unmasked killer. The explanation for how Pryce came to be there so quickly also seems to be unlikely. Pryce is so obviously meant to be the killer that there might as well have been a huge sign hanging over his head informing the audience that they should be suspicious of him.

Whiteout is very unengaging and more than once as the killer pursues potential victims he is forced to use a safety line to keep from getting lost in the snow. Nothing robs a merciless killer of their menace quite like watching them struggle to secure their safety line before going after their intended victim.

Beckinsale and Skerritt have both had decent roles in the past, but here they don’t seem to do anything other than go through the motions. Sena was the director behind Gone in Sixty Seconds and Swordfish so he can direct decent films. Why he decided to direct a film which is just a rehashing of a thousand other the killer-is-someone-you-know stories, and not even a good rehashing, is the biggest mystery here.

Typically with most “mystery/thrillers” there is a twist intended to take the audience by surprise, but it is a twist that most will see coming from a mile away. Those that don’t see it will most likely have already dozed off.

Whiteout is a film that will leave its audience wondering what the point of it was. Most films have been made for some reason, they may not be worthy of Oscars but they are an entertaining way of spending a few hours. However, Whiteout is concerned with revealing a killer before a storm arrives, but the storm arrives and the killer is revealed about five minutes later. What do those trapped on the base do for the next six months? – Who knows because Sena simply skips ahead six months to show one of the characters writing an email.

Perhaps Sena was intending to produce a tense thriller set against the frozen background of the Antarctic but all he succeeds in doing is making a film that is to be avoided like the plague.

Whiteout isn’t worth five seconds of the audience’s lives let alone a full hour and forty-one minutes.

The copyright of the article Whiteout 2009 Film Directed by Dominic Sena in Action Films/Thrillers is owned by Christopher Sharman. Permission to republish Whiteout 2009 Film Directed by Dominic Sena in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.