Movie Reviews!
White Out!
WHITEOUT
Based on a graphic novel by Greg Rucka
Screenplay by Jon Herber & Erich Herber and Chad Hayes & Carey Hayes
Directed by Dominic Shea
No, this is not a real life dramatization about how former Monkee Michael Nesmith's mother invented Liquid Paper and sold the rights to it for millions of dollars just before everybody dumped their typewriters in favor of computers.
This is a story about a murder that takes place in the 7th contininent, the one just south of my villa in Argentina, Antarctica.
When a body is found out on the ice, US Marshal Carrie Stetko (the comely Kate Beckingsale) 
investigates. Stetko used to be assigned to Miami but after a case that went sour, blames herself and asked for the most remote assignment possible. For the past two years she's been at the South Pole, dealing with misdemenors and other minor unnamed crimes (perhaps keeping Gore the Hutt from landing there and complaining about the lack of polar bears is one of her duties). She never expected to face a murder.
And it is a murder, as confirmed by her good buddy Doc Fury (Tom Skeritt) who does an autopsy on the body. The dead man turns out to be a geologist stationed at another remote post. When Stetko flies to the post with her good buddy Delfy (Columbus Short in the "black friend of hero" role) she finds another body and is attacked by a mysterious figure wielding a ice pick. Not the small, shiny ice picks Senor Sock uses when making mixed drinks for nubile young actresses. No. This is more like a ice ax. 
But the attacker swings and misses more than Alex Rios of the Chicago White Sox. And that's a LOT.
The trail leads to a old Soviet cargo plane lost in the snow and ice for 50 years. The plane crashed when the pilots decide (with a very bad plan I might add) to take over the plane and steal the cargo for themselves. Instead the plane crashes, everyone is killed, and the cargo stays locked in the plane until now.
Stetko must find who the murderer is, take him prisoner and recover the plane's cargo, not knowing what that cargo is. She must do it without messing up her hair and makeup, which is perfect throughout.
Beckingsale is probably a little too pretty to be believable as a US Marshal, but I let that slide because I really didn't want to see a movie with some big nasty looking woman investigating. Although the film is rated R for nudity, she fails to disrobe except for a shower scene that takes place right at the beginning of the film. There Kate delivers with a nice strip tease, right down to her cotton briefs and bends away from camera to give us a wonderful shot of her magnificant (covered) heinie. She gets in the shower and suddenly director Dominic Shea forgets how to use a neutral density filter.
All of the promising shower footage is ruined by too much steam. All we see is a hint of flesh moving around in a opaque shower. 
Shea should have called for reshoots. If he wants to get cute with steam, better he use that technique when the group of naked men run around outside with their snowballs bouncing around.
Otherwise Shea does a good job with the action, though sometimes it seems more like a really, really good TV movie than a theatrical release. He builds the tension nicely and white balanced his cameras before shooting all that snow and ice. The script based on a graphic novel by Greg Rucka is okay, though I saw the "surprise" coming a mile away. But I'm Senor Sock. I am extraordinarily perceptive. Most others will probably not think to themselves "Funny such a big name actor has such a small part..." Oh, but I have said too much.
Gabriel Macht and Columbus Short are okay, as is Alex O'Laughlin and I always like seeing Tom Skeritt in films. I just wish I'd have seen a little more of Kate.
"Whiteout" is an enjoyable little murder-mystery-thriller and will probably be even better when watched with your honey in front of a fireplace on a cold winter night.
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