9-16-09 Movie Review: Whiteout

Two noncommercial movie programs between now and next Thursday night. Tonight the Tallgrass Third Thursday series continues with a movie, and discussion following , about a family that discovered that its prosperity originated in the American slave trade and set out to find out the ugly facts about the situation, and did find them, to a shocking degree. The movie is called Traces of the Trade, and it shows tonight at 7 in Warren Theatre West, with the producer and director leading discussion afterwards. The usual Laurel and Hardy fan club meeting has been postponed till October 9, so no more on that. And Sunday night, the Blank Page gallery will show a movie about bicyclists doing things you are urged not to try to imitate in Macaframa, 7:30 p.m. with free popcorn. And commercially, we have a very suspenseful mystery action thriller made unusual largely by being set at the South Pole in winter, with Kate Beckinsale as a federal marshal and Tom Skerritt as a doctor in Whiteout, named after the storm that all but blots out the action at appropriate times. Whiteout makes pretty good sense for an action mystery, and uses the god old device of leaking out clues that gradually tell us what?s going on without finally solving the whole mystery until the very end. Very brief flashbacks illuminate us about Beckinsale?s motives without distracting us from the central plot. The most notable thing is the use of the awful weather at 55 below, with wind such as I wonder whether propeller-driven airplanes could really fly through. You can?t walk from building to building except by crawling upright along lines stretched between them, which makes the foot chases maddeningly slow and almost unbearably suspenseful. There?s lots of hand-to-hand battle both indoors and out and especially on slippery surfaces, the quite feminine Beckinsale can give as good as she gets; she can also imitate Jack Bauer of 24 when necessity and, let?s face it, inclination justifies it. Even painful injuries don?t slow her down; I?m not sure Sigourney Weaver was more effective as an action heroine. And Whiteout is a lot more realistic than the Alien series. I could have done without the age-old device of the agent on the verge of retirement with one more big case to handle, but most of the other elements of classic detective stories were welcome, and even the one-more-case element had more dimension than you might expect. The man who claimed to be from the FBI certainly turned up under suspicious circumstances and the number of suspects allowed for red herrings and solutions hat only led to fresh mysteries. Deadline time was handled in a way I can?t recall ever being used before, and except for a question why the lights were off in only part of the research station, I was never distracted by apparent illogicalities. Nor was I distracted by irrelevant subplots; except for a quite modest shower scene at the start, which will disappoint those who are lured by certain reviews, Whiteout sticks admirably to its theme and story, which are surprisingly adult, coming from a graphic novel. In summary, I rate Whiteout as better than most action movies, no Oscar stuff but unpretentious, suspenseful entertainment that doesn?t require you to numb down your brain cells. That, and Kate Beckinsale, is more than plenty for me.