Kate Beckinsale’s latest movie hit Blu-ray January 19th with the Warner Home Video release of Whiteout.

The movie is set in Antarctica, one of the coldest and most remote locations on the planet, and the cold, stormy environment is almost a character in the film.

I actually watched the movie just after returning from a ski trip where we faced some pretty rough weather ourselves, which made the viewing experience a little more chilling I think!

The plotline follows Beckinsale’s character U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko, who is just about to return to the US mainland after a stint of fairly trivial law enforcement at the US Antarctic base.

Plans go awry however when a murder is discovered, and the Marshall works to solve the crime before the last flight out and the winter over begins.

While the story concept perhaps has a lot of promise, and the technical execution was decent, the movie as a whole has problems due to poor writing.

The film largely lacks energy, though the biggest problem with it for me is that it doesn’t feel true at all.

Some scenes are gratuitous, and in others the characters do things that move the story in the intended direction but don’t make any sense.

Often the physical reality of the environment goes ignored.

Along with Kate Beckinsale, the cast includes Gabriel Macht, Tom Skerritt, Columbus Short and Alex O’Loughlin.

Whiteout was directed by Dominic Sena, the man behind Swordfish and the Gone in Sixty Seconds remake.

There was no love for this movie from the critics - it was awarded a Rotten Tomatoes score of 7%, though did better at the IMDb with a score of 5.3/10.

Whiteout also didn’t do so well at the cinema, earning $10.3M at the US box office.

The video on the disc is a VC-1 1080p encode at 21 Mbps, and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1.

Check out the details page for Whiteout to see full resolution PNG screen captures taken directly from the disc.

The main audio is lossless Dolby True HD with 5.1 channels - 16 bits resolution at 48 kHz.

The disc is a single layer BD25, with 22.9 GB used and is coded for All Regions.

The release comes with a smattering of special features, including a Digital Copy for both Windows and iTunes.

Along with a selection of deleted scenes, we are presented with a pair of featurettes.

In The Coldest Thriller Ever we see some of the challenges that the cast and film crew faced in making the movie.

It seems such a shame to me that such efforts were largely let down by not getting the basic writing right in the first place.

The adaptation from the original comic to the movie screen is covered in Whiteout: From Page To Screen.

Ultimately the Whiteout movie is probably only of interest to the most hardcore Thriller fans, Kate Beckinsale fans or fans of the original publication.

The Blu-ray Disc is a fairly typical Warner Home Video release for one of their less popular titles.

The retail price is $35.99, and it is available at Amazon for $19.99, saving 44%!

Extras:

• The Coldest Thriller Ever
• Whiteout: From Page To Screen
• Additional Scenes
• Digital Copy

Synopsis:

Underworld’s Kate Beckinsale plays a U.S. Marshal based at an Antarctic research station, where the continent’s first-ever murder triggers a shocking mystery she must race to solve before being stranded with six months of winter darkness - and a killer - closing in. Dominic Sena (Swordfish) directs a talented cast including Gabriel Macht, Tom Skerritt and Alex O’Loughlin in Dark Castle Entertainment’s action-packed thriller.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 31st, 2010 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.