Snowbound murder mystery provides no suspense

The icebound thriller "Whiteout" begins most promisingly, with star Kate Beckinsale pulling off her parka and stripping.

Thus, "Whiteout" quickly answers the question on the minds of those who saw her in "Underworld," wearing one of the great leather suits in movie history (with all props to Halle Berry's Catwoman and Carrie Ann Moss' "Matrix" girl) and wondered: What would she look like in the shower?

Pretty darn good.

Almost good enough to make you forget the warning signs that precede it - clues that indicate "Whiteout" will not be a very smart thriller.

I refer to an opening title card. It informs us that Antarctica is "the coldest, most isolated land mass in the world." It's also south of Key West, Fla., if you still can't place it.

Clearly, "Whiteout" doesn't want to lose anybody. You'll have no trouble following along, trotting three or four scenes ahead, or skipping directly to the end.

Meanwhile, you have the comfort of the standard "C.S.I." plot format. Beckinsale is a U.S. Marshal (don't ask) policing a South Pole research center where somebody finds a "popsicle" - a frozen body in the snow.

The murder victim turns out to be a scientist stationed at an even more remote outpost, where investigators find more gruesomeness, and a pretext making even more macabre remarks. (It's the modern crime thriller standard. Every corpse comes with a toe tag and a wisecrack.)

The screenplay is unusually lazy - additional investigators (Gabriel Macht, purportedly a U.N. detective) appear literally out of nowhere, in the middle of nowhere.

When we finally get an explanation for the cause of all the bloodshed, we don't expect it to make much sense, and it doesn't. We do, however, expect the mastermind to deliver a long-winded speech about the whys and wherefores of his crime.

Which he does, after finally revealing himself, much to the lack of amazement of the audience.

"I told you!" shouted a viewer, after the big reveal.

Well, you needn't have, since we had already performed the mental exercise of assuming the movie had a surprise ending, and identifying the most avuncular, least likely character as the culprit.

You have to find something to do when Beckinsale's not in the shower.