The snow-saturated neo-noir “Whiteout,” which was originally planned to become titled “Walking Supply” after the short film it is based on, is a Canadian film. It is notable that the new title of the film is also presented in nanoseconds at the point of subtitle view. For context, Saban Films is marketing the movie as an extreme actioner drama and I assume they wanted a title that did not highlight the brutality of the movie that once was Walking Supply. Even so, there definitely are better options than “Whiteout,” since in 2009, a movie with Kate Beckinsale used the same name for their snow-covered film.
As the film progresses, it transforms into a grim action movie that holds no remorse for the audience. Initially we are introduced to Henry (Co writer James Mcdougall, who is also notable in the film), an electrical engineer that gets kidnapped alongside his Russian counterparts to direct a plot set in the distant future, all the while being held in a labor camp. The Canadian ice capped mountains being a total giveaway.
Henry quickly becomes the target of a few English-speaking prisoners (Joel LaBelle and co-writer Douglas Nyback), who are seeking men ready to assist them in their escape. Still, after the breakout, they will also have to face the frozen wasteland, searching for railroad tracks in the hope of returning to society. While those prisoners are former soldiers who are trained to rough it, ours bald, meek, schlubby hero Henry is figuratively and literally a dead weight to the soldiers, baby-sitting him, his mere presence becoming irksome to them Second only to the Tukhman Henry is escorted by Victor (Ian Matthews), another Russian who escapes, who turns into a defending coach/life mentor mentoring his host such practicals as food trapping, weapon holding, hyperthermia disposal (which largely incorporates of running and shooting).
You would think that “Whiteout” is just another run-of-the-mill man vs. natural world film. And it is, for the most part, throughout the duration of the 91 minutes long movie. Alongside McDougall and Nyback He makes his debut feature as a Hard bitten and frost bitten film where lost bastards become men if they are to individually work together beating the odds and each other to work and face the weather.
And then we come to the inevitable horrific twist that turns Whiteout from a snowy action-adventure animation to a horror feature. I had my inkling that this is where the plot is headed especially when the characters start getting all paranoid at each other and there is a bit more of a show of a small axe. Even so, it’s interesting to note the importance of violence against women narratively even if you expect it, Barnes and company pull out that monkey wrench in a jarring, gory fashion.
This rather unfortunate fact remains: the twist is the only unexpected thing in Whiteout that lasts an hour and a half and is about a guy being bullied, battered, mistreated and harassed until he finally decides no more and out of nowhere turns into a wounded warrior and goes ham in a brutal climax. McDougall as Henry is a ‘loser’ who bears sad eyes and is very sympathetic to us. True, he’s a Kamikaze, and a babbling one at that, (he actually makes a cringeworthy joke about being taken back to a gulag) but there’s something doughy and miserable about him that makes it impossible to want him to be run over by a bus.
He has the advantage of being around other characters who are written simply as sadistic, loathsome alpha-thug characters from the goons who first captured him to the soldiers he later had to follow.
Whiteout loosely, but brilliantly recreates camp out adventures that have their roots in masculinity. If you thought the combination of wolves and Neeson in “The Grey” was not primitive enough then, “Whiteout” is sadistic, disturbing, And it possesses an air of an incredibly low budget gentleman horror film. Indeed, it resonates cold brutal dark winter time and elder brothers and fathers’ energy drinks. It multi-tortures its main character, with elements of dastardly evil rape worrying. Well, yeah, indeed the world is far too cold.
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