WHITEOUT

Antarctica. The six months of darkness are about to arrive and a snowstorm is about to hit the area where a group of researchers are looking for meteorites. In the only inhabited outpost, Carrie Stetko, the local sheriff with a difficult past, also resides and operates. She will soon have to deal with the first certified murder in Antarctica. Indeed, one of the researchers at the base is found dead nearby, and he will be followed by a second murder. Who is the hooded killer armed with an ice axe who is reaping victims in such a hostile place? And why is he doing it? The latest film adapted from a successful graphic novel has performed at the box office like a colossal flop. "Whiteout – Blizzard" based on the eponymous graphic novel by Greg Rucka (scripts) and Steve Lieber (drawings), cost approximately 35 million dollars and brought home (considering the worldwide box office) only 12 and some change; a tremendous blow to Warner Bros and Dark Castle that produced it and the reason why in Italy this film was released in such a quiet way and in so few theaters as to be practically invisible. A deserved failure? Partly yes, because the thriller directed by Dominic Sena is lazy and predictable from the first to the last frame, showing signs of suffering in the mind of the viewer the syndrome of premature aging. What remains from the post-viewing of "Whiteout" is indeed comparable to the limited visibility that is characteristic of the atmospheric phenomenon that gives the title to the film: an opera that is quickly forgotten, in short, and that is worth watching only for the spot-on location. The story begins in an intriguing way with a prologue set in the 1950s and the discovery of a corpse in Antarctica, the first recognized murder case in the southernmost continent in the world. The struggle in the plane, which we see in the prologue, and which sees Russian aviators as protagonists, immediately evokes the spy climate characteristic of certain films from the heyday of the Cold War and finds a good connection with the mystery of the transported crates that then goes to represent part of the investigation in the present day. Also, the yellowish beginning that sees Sheriff Stetko as the protagonist starts off on the right foot, evoking original thriller atmospheres mixed with certain slasher iconography (masked killer and armed with a white weapon). Unfortunately, however, what is initially good offered to the viewer is soon turned into banal and boring routine. The story tends to build a mystery that once revealed makes you drop your arms for the unmotivated simplicity that characterizes the solution and I refer both to the mystery of the crates (unforgivable!) and to the identity and motive of the killer, by the way very easy to discover for the viewer accustomed to the mechanisms of the giallo. Another sore point is the static nature of the events. The film proceeds in a flat, let's say boring, way, neglecting the action that the story could have offered and completely disregarding the tension, necessary for a film of this kind. Instead, one relies on the aforementioned plot twists that surprise no one and on the icy setting, which instead turns out to be the film's greatest asset. The environments become in "Whiteout" protagonists as much as the characters who move within them, the limited visibility of the exteriors, the real sense of glacial cold and all the discomforts and dangers that it entails are rendered very well both by the use of special effects (probably "Whiteout" has one of the most credible snowstorms seen in the cinema in recent years) and by the management of the spaces, which often become non-spaces, devoid of depth and definition, in short, really disorienting even for the viewers. Good the cast, led by a talented Kate Beckinsale ("Underworld"; "Vacancy"), who also performs an incredibly sensual parenthesis right at the beginning of the film, and by a professional Tom Skerritt ("Alien"; "Top Gun"), unfortunately trapped in a stereotyped and uninteresting character, as well as Gabriel Macht ("The Spirit"; "Shadow of Power"). In the director's chair Dominic Sena, usually involved with action films ("Gone in 60 Seconds"; "Swordfish") and here at ease especially with the (few) adrenaline-packed scenes, proving to be rather anonymous for the rest of the film. The pace is lacking, the action too, the same goes for the tension and the violence (there is only one effective scene with two fingers in gangrene that stirs the viewer's guts); in "Whiteout" therefore only a good starting idea developed poorly and the beautiful glacial settings (as well as Beckinsale in déshabillé) remain. Is it worth recovering? To each his own.