Just saw this yesterday.
Clearly, spoilers...
Sigh.
The sets looked great and I was hoping to get something Thing-like going on, atmosphere-wise, even though it was supposed to be a mundane murder mystery, but even great sets -the movie's and Kate's- can't save this yawn-fest.
Sure, there's a gratuitous shower scene in the first ten minutes and yes, Kate looks amazing, but there's no nudity and from that moment on I was dreading where the film was going. They blew their wad in under ten, not a good sign. They could have at least waited until the handful of named characters actually got isolated on the base alone, once the storm moved in and the background extras were evacced. You know, so Kate could go take a shower to unwind for the second-to-third act transition and think about who the second killer could possibly be.
Anyway, Tom "Dallas" Skerritt's in it as the crotchety old doctor and you know if he doesn't get killed before the first act is over, he has to be the Behind-the-Scenes Manipulator Villain.
Alex O'loughlin (the Moonlight Vamp) pops up blatantly and then just as blatantly tries to vanish into the background a couple times, marking him as the skimask-wearing, ice-axe-wielding Front and Center Villain.
Ugh. It's like every episode of CSI: Miami.
The other characters are all stock: there's the token black guy with technical skills who contributes nothing to the story but pointless anecdotes and who no one seriously thinks could be the villain; the White American Hero who inexplicably works for the UN, and who's been granted some blanket authority he simply wouldn't have that no one questions yet he is the designated Villainous Red Herring from the moment he appears; and the base administrator who's been a serial killer/psycho in other films, and so is the Beyond the Fourth Wall Villainous Red Herring, who ends up doing absolutely nothing except collect a paycheck. Everyone else is an extra, lines or no.
That is, except for Kate's character, the flashback-prone US Marshal with a troubled past, fantastic wardrobe, flawless skin and perfect body. You know, the kind of officer they're always sending to the most isolated place on the planet with the only gun and PTSD.
And if you didn't know Antarctica was the most isolated place on the planet, don't worry, the movie tells you when it gets around to identifying the locale by printing "the most isolated place on the planet" right below the Antarctica location tag ... at the opening of the second scene set there.
The CGI is also glaringly bad, making the planes, snowbase wide shots and storm effects fail utterly. Fake weather let me ignore how no one but the villain ever covered the lower half of their face, even though it was supposed to be -65 C outside and Kate only got frostbite when the writer felt it was dramatically appropriate. Yes, that's right, they marred Kate's perfection with mulitple amputations. I still wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers, though.
Then the movie kind of just, well, ends. It's almost like the writer thought this was going to be the pilot for a new US Marshal series or something. At least, that's how I imagined what the fuck the purpose of the last scene was. Feel free to watch it and come up with your own ending, the writer clearly didn't have a fucking clue.
I think Kate is going to stay in the Service and travel the world one step behind every single badguy she hunts down with her black pilot sidekick (Terror War vet, naturally) and Abercrombie UN boyfriend (also a vet), but not before she takes some me time and watches the aurora outside for the first time ever after only being down there for over a year.
D (I didn't Fail it because of the sets and Kate)
Wait for HBO. Don't waste your money, even on a rental.
EDIT: Great poster, I'll give them that. Course, a picture's hard to fail with Kate Beckinsale.
