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Dom Robinson reviews

Whiteout

See Your Last Breath.

Distributed by
Optimum Home Entertainment

Cover Blu-ray:
DVD:

Cover Whiteout starts in 1957, as two Russian pilots flying over the Northern Lights start a shoot-out on their own plane with other Russian members which leads to the plane crashing and everyone ending up brown bread. Zoom forward to Present Day, Antarctica at the Amundsen-Scott Base, a US Scientific Research Facility where the temperature is a bit nippy at -55C. Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) comes in from the cold and strips off. She doesn't look like she needs a shower, but takes one anyway. Her appartment is surprisingly des-res as you'd presume they'd look more like something knocked up by Josef Fritzl.

Anyway, the staff change over periodically but winter is coming in slightly early (in the Antarctic? Who knew?) and so she's on the first plane out of there along with "Doc" Dr John Fury (Tom Skerrit)... well, until they get wind of a dead body out in the middle of nowhere. However, it's not someone who's been out there for 50 years, it's one of their own, but what was he doing out there? Either way, a storm is brewing up outside, planes are being scrambled and someone's just referenced Top Gun.

Carrie gets a callout to meet with John Mooney, a colleague who worked with the dead guy, out at Vostock, so she goes... and finds Mooney at death's door. worse still, the baddy's waiting for her! But what's it all about? It ain't Die Hard 2 that's for sure.

As we find out what Carrie thinks happened on the Russian plane, it starts to turn into an episode of Diagnosis Murder. The writing is predictable, especially when Carrie has her demons about her past and it's made to loosely tie in with the present.

A lot of this takes place during a whiteout and Doc describes one of those as an unholy set of weather conditions which converge and the world... falls away. Winds get up to over 100mph so you can't see 6ft in front of your face. Hence, it's basically game over if you're stuck out there when it happens.

Whiteout is another case of a murderer on the loose and the good guys getting picked off one by one. I didn't guess who the baddie was, as I always like to empty my mind before watching such a film and try not to second guess them, but even when the revelation did come it wasn't particular interesting. Dominic Sena did much better with Kalifornia. That said, he did later spoil it with the lacklustre Gone in 60 Seconds remake and Swordfish, of which only the opening scene stands out for me.

In short, Whietout is often as exciting as watching Tippex dry.

Cover Presented in the original 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen ratio, for a lot of the time there's no problems with the picture but Blu-ray is all well and good when you can see what's going on. However, as the baddie goes off during the whiteout, trying to kill people it gets ridiculously confusing when you can't see what's going on. Similarly, the picture quality is fairly inconsequential at other times out in the snow blizzards, except for when there's a clear abundance of CGI. The film was shot in Super 35 so will allow for a better 16:9 transfer when it makes it to TV (presuming it doesn't end up on C4 where they actually show films properly now, so that would be a better bet), except for CGI scenes which will be cropped to 16:9. For the record, I'm watching on a Panasonic 37" Plasma screen via a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player.

As for the sound, this this in DTS 5.1 HD Master Audio, or DTS 5.1 for those, like me, without the full technical dohickey. It's okay - snow blizzards and occasional gunshots, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The extras are as follows:

  • "Whiteout: The Coldest Thriller Ever" featurette (12:02): As Kate begins, "Joel (Silver, producer) described it as the coldest thriller ever made... which doesn't sound like a good sell, really." - Interesting words.

    The film wasn't shot in the Antarctic, as that would be too risky, but instead in Manitoba and Québec, Canada. This featurette mixes in work-in-progress footage and clips from the film in anamorphic 2.35:1 with soundbites from various cast and crew members. Nothing to write home about but Kate Beckinsale does look quite delish in this piece.

  • "Whiteout: From Page to Screen" featurette (12:04): How it got from one to the other with graphic novelists Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber. There's occasional input from some of those from the previous featurette.

  • Deleted Scenes (4:11): 2 of them here, presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic, neither of which would need inserting back into the film.

  • Trailer (2:02): Presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic and chops the film up so as to make it look a lot more interesting than it actually is.

The menu mixes a snow blizzard in with a short piece of music from the film playing over and over. There are English subtitles but the Chaptering is, again for Optimum, appalling with just 12 over the 101-minute running time.

FILM CONTENT n
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS


OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2010.

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