Chill Out

[Click here for a guide to Booze Revooze and the rating system used]

From the soundtrack, in the Juice-box: Marc Bolan & T-Rex – Laser Love

[Press 'Play' to get the Rock rolling]

Ramblings: A Cold Day In Hell

Final Proof:2½ Shots

Here’s exactly when i knew i was in trouble. Sitting in the front row of the near empty theater as the opening credits started to roll, i was thinking about how the movie wasn’t exactly going to be all that but at least i’d be able to watch Kate Beckinsale for 101 minutes. Right then it hit me like a clump of gushy snow falling off an awning and dripping down the back of my shirt: Kate Beckinsale was going to spend 101 minutes in ANTARCTICA, so the chances of her playing beach volleyball in a bikini were anorexic to none. Doh!

You know how you decide to go to a bar you know is going to suck but you want to go anyway because there’s this really hot girl that’s going to be there? So you get there and the bar smells funny and the people there aren’t really jerks but they’re not just people you’d consider cool? So you settle in and the hot girl shows up, only she’s wearing this huge, baggy sweater, a goofy knit hat and sweat pants. Whiteout was kinda like that.

Whiteout didn’t disappoint: i expected bad. At least it had the decency to be not as bad as i’d feared.

The stuff that wasn’t that bad included Kate Beckinsale’s doing a decent job with what the role of US Marshal Carrie Stetko had to offer. Also, in between the repetitive and repetitive and repetitive flashbacks, the stilted dialogue and disappointing visual effects (is it really that hard to fake snow?), director Dominic Sena was able to squeeze in a couple suspenseful scenes. However, despite some chilling moments, Whiteout left me cold.

Sometimes i gotta wonder if the production staff set out with the goal of ‘just mediocre’. It wasn’t just the lazy directing and writing, either. Gabriel Macht looked like he thought he was filling someone else’s snowshoes in a CSI: Antarctica episode. The story was predictable too, not surprising considering it was based on a graphic novel, but only the novel part made it to the screen. What happened to the graphic?

Buzz Kills (Watch Out for Spoilers)

Sex: ½ Shot

Like i said in the intro to this review, it was only after i’d sat down that i realized the movie was set in Ant-freaking-arctica so there was no way Kate Beck-on-sale was going to be showing off her wares.

i was kinda wrong, though. Seems even people in the South Pole need to shower at times. Thank god some of them need to do it the very first thing in the movie.

No sooner than the opening credits end, we get Kate disrobing down to this industrial strength sports bra, bending over a little to adjust the water temp, and then getting into the shower. Here Sena offers pretty traditional steamy water Titty Blocking (when an actress is topless but the director hides her boobs through different miss-directing techniques).

After this, there’s nothing remotely sexual that takes place anywhere in the entire movie. There aren’t even any other actresses. Sometimes, however, all you need is one.

What Happens When You Wear Gauze in the Arctic (1)

What Happens When You Wear Gauze in the Arctic (2)

Oh yeah, i almost forgot. It doesn’t really count as ‘sex’ for me, but some of y’all might be interested to learn that there’s a brief frontal shot of three men streaking in the snow. Their ‘icicles’ are blurred out and have shrunk down to stubs, but hell, you think Santa and the Jingle Balls shrivel up in cold water, try whipping them out on a polar ice cap.

Drink: ½ Shot

In the intro, we get some white Russians in a cargo plane drinking vodka. As a distraction to open fire, the guy with the gun drops the bottle to make another guy scramble frantically to retrieve it (hey, Russians and vodka, babes). Later in the movie, a pink shirted (’cause he doesn’t really die) black guy takes a fifth off the wreckage and swigs from it before driving off in his snow truck to the initial admonishments of his buddy who warns him it will decrease body temperature before laughing gaily and hitting it himself.

Tom Skerritt’s character, Dr John ‘Doc’ Fury, has a penchant for scotch, which he swallows before a walk into the snow.

Whiteout actually did have something to teach me about alcohol, though. Well, actually, it taught me about arctic ice. See, there’s a scene when revelers pour whiskey on ice and the whiskey looks like it’s boiling. What happens is, ice on the poles has been compressed for millenia (which means a really long time, like how long a church picnic feels when no one’s spiked the lemonade). The air has been super compacted inside the ice, so when you pour warm water–or liquor–over it, the compressed gas escapes (think beer farts on a road trip) and the liquid looks like it’s boiling.

Rock & Roll: 0 Shots

In the whiskey sequence i mentioned above, there’s a live band rousing the rabblers to the tune of T-Rex’s “Laser Love”. Apart from that, Whiteout is completely barren of both Rock & Roll music and attitude.

Boring Technical Crap

Written by: Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber, Chad Hayes and Carey W Hayes

Based on: The graphic novel by Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber

Directed by: Dominic Sena

Starring

Kate Beckinsale – US Marshal Carrie Stetko

Gabriel Macht – Robert Pryce

Tom Skerritt – Dr John ‘Doc’ Fury

Bottom Line

Don’t see it. If you see it just for Kate, leave after she gets out of the shower (less than five minutes in).