Psycho shower scene

Kate Beckinsale’s career has officially hit a pothole. Before her latest, the boring Antarctica mystery Whiteout, she had two straight-to-DVD ventures with Nothing but the Truth and the deplorable Fragments. Whiteout should’ve probably suffered the same fate.

It’s not completely awful, but it gives you no real reason to see it. Except, of course, for a Kate Beckinsale shower scene that happens just minutes after her U.S. Marshal character is introduced. After an opening plane crash, director Dominic Sena gives us a long, useless and presumably expensive tracking shot as Beckinsale’s character, Carrie, walks to her living quarters. She then strips out of her parka and other outer layers until she’s in her underwear. Then, she walks to the shower and bends over to turn on the water, sticking her butt into the camera lens. It really is quite obligatory—yet glorious … I think I might’ve cried. We then get a full body shot of her in the shower from the outside, but the damn glass is steamed up. I hoped we might actually get nudity because this thing is R-rated, but no such luck.

After the shower, the movie basically starts, and one wishes she just stayed in the stall. The messy plot involves some mysterious cargo on the plane that crashes, a mangled body found out on the ice, and somebody running around killing people with an ice ax. Beckinsale’s Carrie is supposed to head back to the states, but she soon finds out she will be in Antarctica for the winter, what with people getting killed and all.

Tom Skerritt shows up as a crusty doctor, the interesting Gabriel Macht appears out of nowhere as some sort of international agent, and Beckinsale remains in heavy clothing for the rest of the movie.

There are plenty of scenes with characters struggling in stormy snow, yet only one featuring Beckinsale in her panties just before showering. I got to thinking: Was the shower scene written into the original script, or did they decide to shoot it when they realized their movie kind of sucked?

The film, based on a graphic novel, wants so much to be a mystery, but being that there are only a few true suspects, figuring out who the bad guys—or girls—are is pretty easy.

What’s hard to figure out is why they didn’t just base this whole film in the shower with Beckinsale? Seriously, ditch the whole Whiteout thing with the snow and stuff, call the thing Kate’s Impossibly Brilliant Ass and never let the camera leave the shower. While we’re at it, give her $50 million dollars to take it all off. Skerritt can stay in the movie as a towel boy. You can’t tell me a major release movie called Kate’s Impossibly Brilliant Ass wouldn’t gross over $100 million.

Thanks to John Carpenter’s The Thing, which had a similar setting, I also kept expecting some sort of alien monster to enter the fray. That vibe was further helped along by the presence of Skerritt, one of the original stars of Alien. Yeah, a monster in the movie probably would’ve made things more exciting.

You know what else would’ve made this thing more exciting? More shower scenes with Kate Beckinsale, that’s what. OK, maybe all of her scantily clad scenes wouldn’t have to be set in the shower. At the beginning of the film, some naked dudes run by Beckinsale, heading somewhere as if they had a purpose. She could’ve just said “What the heck!” stripped down, and frolicked with them. Scene!

Oh, in case you think I’m some sort of sexist freak with a one-track mind because all I’ve basically done in this review is talk about Kate in the shower, go see Whiteout. I think once you’ve seen it, my one-track mind will be vindicated. It is, without a doubt, the only moment in this movie that makes an impression.