Whiteout 2009

Michael Phillips, At the Movies: A stupid thriller. Read more

Mary F. Pols, MSN Movies: ...the whole cast delivers numb, almost affect-less performances; the cold must have got to them. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: Has a perfunctory, by-the-numbers approach to its story and its characters. Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: Whiteout's intriguing setting and storyline would be gripping if Beckinsale's Sherlocking around wasn't so glossed-over, or alternately spoon-fed to the audience. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: A ham-handed murder mystery. Read more

Cliff Doerksen, Chicago Reader: The film's slick and expensive looking but dumber than a dead penguin. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: The film is all panicky zooms and badly staged action dotted with random forensic gross-outs. And, just for the fun of it, an amputation scene. Read more

Adam Graham, Detroit News: The movie then becomes one of those murder mysteries where everyone is a suspect, and the murderer himself is the least likely candidate of all. Dispelling all logic, you should be able to figure out this whodunit in the opening minutes. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Whiteout is a conventionally jam-packed, dutifully ludicrous action thriller. Read more

Jake Coyle, Associated Press: It's Kate Beckinsale on Ice. Read more

Glenn Whipp, Los Angeles Times: No event occurs without a character telling us what we're seeing. This unwelcome commentary is so overdone that it becomes, by the end, an invitation for audience participation. All together now: It's a body! Looks like it's been shot in the head! Read more

Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News: Its worst offense is assuming the audience is so dumb that it'll be shocked by one of the most telegraphed endings in movie history. On second thought, maybe the filmmakers got their wish: Whiteout is shocking, shockingly bad. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: Sadly, Whiteout wimps out, starting out like The Thing and winding up like CSI: South Pole, wasting whatever it has going for it. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: The severely nonthrilling thriller Whiteout moves like winter in Antarctica. Who the flake greenlit this blobby blur? Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: For all its frozen blood, assaults with ice axes and killer weather, Whiteout turns out to be only a pale imitation of the thriller it might have been. Read more

Tirdad Derakhshani, Philadelphia Inquirer: It'll take all day to list all the things that are wrong with Whiteout. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: What's missing from Whiteout is the pervasive sense of paranoia that you'd expect, or hope for, from a thriller set on the coldest and most isolated land mass on the planet. Read more

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times: Even in a whiteout, you can see the plot twists coming. Read more

Greg Quill, Toronto Star: By eliminating so many suspects before the obligatory drawing-room denouement and final deadly confrontation, it's a given that the audience will feel cheated when the real bad guy turns out to be the only possible contender. Read more

Nigel Floyd, Time Out: John Frizzel's over-worked soundtrack keeps telling us how exciting everything is, but it feels as if we're frozen in time. Not so much a white-out as wipe-out. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: While the setting can be mesmerizing, little else about this movie is captivating. It's a standard-issue thriller, with a twist you see coming a continent away. Read more

Lael Loewenstein, Variety: Should fade faster than a polar bear in a blizzard. Read more

Dan Zak, Washington Post: Read more