Evaluation I found

I wanted to do a review for a movie my girlfriend and I wanted to see, so I went on MSN Movies and looked up a review of the movie: Whiteout.


'Whiteout' Strikes Out
Mary Pols, Special to MSN Movies

In the climactic scene of "Whiteout," a thriller with the pulse of a glacier, set in and around the South Pole, three characters in bulky parkas try to navigate from one building to another, using guide ropes that they clip themselves onto. A blizzard is in full swing, and the snow is blowing so densely that letting go, for them, would be only slightly more foolish than you paying theater prices to see this movie.
Just to complicate things, someone is wielding an ice ax. Or perhaps two people; it's hard to tell because, thanks to the whiteout conditions, we, like the characters, can't see anything, not even the chief draw of the film, Kate Beckinsale. Best known for conducting her "Underworld" action scenes clad in tight black leather, here Beckinsale is featured in layers of Gore-Tex and fleece. She plays Carrie Stetko, a U.S. marshal who took a job at a research facility in Antarctica in order to recover from an on-the-job trauma a couple of years back. She's damaged, in the manner of so many movie heroines.
The Antarctica gig has been peaceful and dull. But, right before she is scheduled to get on a plane and escape to a more pleasant climate for the winter, a dead body turns up on the ice. He's a geologist and he's missing half his face. Suddenly Carrie has a murder investigation on her hands. We know it somehow relates to a bloody midair shootout and subsequent crash of a Soviet plane in 1957, because we've seen the prologue, but poor Carrie is in the dark. The clock is ticking; can she solve the case of the "popsicle," as she and the tough guys on the station endearingly refer to a frozen body, before it's time to head north?
Initially, as the lone U.S. marshal on the research station, she's the only one on the case. The facility's doctor (Tom Skerritt) serves as a source of comfort and wisdom. A good-natured pilot, Delfy (Columbus Short), flies her from one frozen crime scene to another (the bodies start to pile up). But then the United Nations, ever helpful, sends in an investigator, Robert Pryce (Gabriel Macht) to oversee the case. He's a specialist in the Russian-American relationship, but all that really matters is that he's attractive, in a slightly shifty way, and might not be trustworthy, having turned up just as Carrie survives her first run-in with an unidentifiable, ax-wielding man in a parka. He could be the murderer, or a love interest. What is a girl to do? In the Antarctic, where logical thinking seems to be impaired, you go stomping around on the ice together, looking for clues.
Beckinsale is a pleasant but not wildly expressive actress, and "Whiteout" does not represent a breakthrough. When she cries, the tears are tiny and oddly dry. But, to be fair, the whole cast delivers numb, almost affect-less performances; the cold must have got to them. Movies about filmmaking often feature a film within the film that's so insanely over the top that even the most clueless person in the audience knows it is a parody (remember in "The Player," where Bruce Willis, playing himself, carries Julia Roberts, doing the same, out of the death chamber?). The plot of "Whiteout" is not quite as ill-conceived, but it's so easy to imagine Beckinsale, thinking she'd landed a serious part in a cool location (most of this was shot in Canada, which stands in very nicely for the true frigid locale), realizing she's made a mistake. "So I fumble with the clamp on the rope?" you could see her asking. "Repeatedly, for several minutes? This is the climax? And you can't see my face? We're all just blurry people in parkas?"
In turn, we can imagine director Dominic Sena's (deliverer of such previous suspect gifts as "Swordfish" and "Gone in Sixty Seconds") talking her through it: "I know darling, it is unusual, but that's what makes it so special. But we do need something for your fans. How about we do a gratuitous shower scene, early on? You'll peel off your 11 layers to reveal some pretty undies, and then take off your top and wash away that Antarctic chill while we watch." And, by George, Beckinsale does it. She a trouper, but that won't distract anyone from the film's shortcomings.


So apparently accoding to one film critic, the movie sucks. For now I guess I'll take her word for it and not waste a date on this movie, however i still wanna see it so im going to wait for it to come out on DVD.