Review of "Whiteout" opening wide today (9/11/09)

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Whiteout
Director: Dominic Sena
With: Kate Beckinsale, Tom Skerrit, Gabriel Macht, Alex O’Loughlin, Columbus Short

I am an acquaintance of Greg Rucka, a Portland writer whom I have interviewed a few times for KBOO on his fine work as a thriller writer.  He is also well-known for his graphic novels, from which this bad movie is adapted.  I hope he got paid a lot for this, because they ruined it.
Okay, I never read the books from which this came, but I can’t imagine Greg writing anything this bad.
It had me for a while, because of the set-up, a U.S. marshal in Antarctica, in one of the most hostile environments on earth outside, and a completely strange and artificial environment inside.  Carrie Stetko (Beckinsale), after she strips down for a gratuitous shower scene, is informed that a body has been found out on the ice.  The investigation comprises a crashed Soviet airplane 50 years before (a McGuffin to get the plot rolling), its mysterious cargo, and the effect of its discovery on the less-savory members of the base crew.
Stetko is haunted by a screw-up in her past, related in tedious and frequent flashbacks, and handicapped by the loss of 2 fingers to the cold.  We are handicapped by having to watch this preposterous movie work itself out, and haunted by the idea that the talented Beckinsale may never get a good role again.
The plot has vast holes and improbabilities, dumb dialogue and suggests the question: why is this woman still working as a law enforcement officer? 
There is one sequence, a struggle in a howling hurricane at 65 below Celsius, that is nifty for about 5 minutes.  The movie, alas, is 96 minutes long.
D