Whiteout

Average to below-average thriller with a transparent point set in an unconventional environment. Kate Beckinsale won't save it. (17/02/2010)

I like movies that engage the audience, and Whiteout certainly does just that. This happens in the prologue alone, where the pilot gets up from the controls and goes to his passengers intending to take over the cargo they are carrying. A screenwriter who doesn't think about the audience would let those passengers be put to sleep, poisoned, suffocated, or whatever else, and that would be boring because then the story could successfully end within a few minutes. However, a pilot who pulls out a gun and starts a furious bloody shootout, even though he knows the plane will crash to the ground...now that's different. Tension can be felt in every second. The crew exchanges gunfire with submachine guns, and the plane helplessly crashes to the ground, so that the plot can continue in an equally entertaining, but unfortunately contrived and silly way. You see, on the other hand, I like clever movies, and Whiteout certainly isn't one of those. The mistake probably comes from the comic book source material, but the direction contributes just as much. The film is enjoyable when it has action scenes, such as fighting and wielding an ice axe in a snowstorm with minimal visibility and a temperature of around 50 degrees below zero. But the logic falls apart and the ending is also lacking because the action finale comes too early and the big surprise isn't actually that surprising. Setting the story in Antarctica is original on one hand, but on the other, it brings with it numerous genre limitations, because searching for a perpetrator in such a small community wouldn't be such a big challenge if the screenwriter adhered to the aforementioned storytelling logic. Overall impression: 40%. (22/10/2010)

By chance, Bílá smrt is actually a pretty good movie, unlike how it is presented here. It caught my attention already with the logo of the company that held a protective hand over the film. And no wonder, when it was Warner Bros, and it was completely frozen and covered in snow. However, one would expect far more from that, than what I actually experienced. But I'm used to it, that sometimes they come up with nonsense that doesn't make any sense and one wonders why they even bother putting money into it. Bílá smrt looks decent. After all, it is quite an interesting crime film set in Antarctica. It can't look any other way. One of the problems is the story, which drags on like crazy, as if returning home from the pub at night. And an even worse problem is mainly in the effects, which are absolutely ridiculous and sometimes I would even compare them to the movie Lake Placid 3, which is one of the dumbest movies I have ever seen in my life, and I watched it right after this movie. (At least I laughed at that one though). Here, on the other hand, I didn't laugh at all, but there was no reason to. If the creators had thought about whether they wanted a crime film with effects or a natural film about the first murder in Antarctica, then they should have just gone with one. But they didn't. (04/08/2011)

Cold inside, cold outside, I decided to make myself a bowl of hot soup and check what’s going on in the Antarctic. Unfortunately it looks just the same. I experience pretty much the same atmosphere waiting for the bus in a snowstorm. A routine story to the core couldn’t be saved even by beautiful Kate in the shower... I’m afraid that Sena will never shoot anything better than California. (07/01/2010)

This thriller, in which something is always happening, takes place in an attractive environment and we get to see a lot of the hot Kate Beckinsale. And yet it is unable to truly engage the audience. Is this really the work of no fewer than four screenwriters? And producer Joel Silver? Whiteout looks like a straight-to-DVD B-movie similar to Babylon A.D., for example. The plot is routine and the characters are flat, aspects from which its creators try to divert attention with camera filters that make Antarctica more colorful than a rainforest. (12/03/2010)