Baby, it's cold outside: that's the problem for U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale), the only law-enforcement officer assigned to Antarctica. On the verge of shipping out before the really bad weather hits, Carrie is confronted with a mysterious murder that sounds like a riddle: how'd a lone corpse find its way to the middle of an ice field, as though dropped from a great height? And what's this have to do with the prologue about a Soviet fighter jet crashing some decades earlier? "Whiteout", based on the graphic novel by Greg Rucka, solves these questions in a brisk if mostly preposterous manner, and it moves swiftly enough so you don't have to spend too much time on the plausibility of it all. Among the other snowbound stragglers are a U.N. investigator (Gabriel Macht, of "The Spirit"), some cocky pilots (Alex O'Laughlin, Columbus Short), and a grizzled doctor (Tom Skerritt). If the presence of Skerritt conjures up memories of "Alien", with its ten-little-Indians structure and female warrior, hold on--"Whiteout" doesn't actually have a supernatural twist to it, and Beckinsale is no Sigourney Weaver. But director Dominic Sena (undistinguished by his cheesy film "Swordfish") puts the screws to the material in a relentless way, and the vast exteriors (shot in Canada) are impressive. And when it comes to one particular wow-you're-really-going-there instance of potential amputation for a main character, the film doesn't back down. In fact it sort of revels in the moment. "--Robert Horton"