Whiteout (2000)

Wakamatsu Setsurou

Japan

129 min, color, Japanese (English subtitles)

As a Die Hard rip-off, Whiteout does not particularly shine. It's hard to tell whether it shines at anything despite the good photography and the few inspired scenes. I do not understand why it did so well at the box office in Japan: Several thousand die-hard fans (pun intended) even waited for a day in line for the opening night.

Togashi (Oda Yuji) is an operator at the largest dam in Japan, Okutowa Dam in Niigata prefecture. He has a reputation for being somewhat unruly especially when it comes to protecting "his" dam from whatever comes to mind: from rusty spots that no one can see to terrorists. One day, he loses his best friend in a whiteout --- a meteorological phenomenon that occurs during snowstorms that causes light to appear to come from all directions; in other words, it is very easy to lose your way even if you are an experienced climber. When Togashi is rescued, he finds out that his friend has perished although the two people they had set out to save, survive.

Now his friend has a beautiful fiancee by the name of Chiaki (Matsushima Nanako), who, for inexplicably and possibly very morbid reasons, decides to visit the mountain that claimed her lover's life. The very hour she arrives, a bunch of terrorists blow up the tunnel on the only road connecting the dam to the outside world. The seize Okutowa Dam to ransom it and the hostages for 5 million of inflation-ridden yen... or so it seems. Naturally, Togashi manages to evade bullets, frost-bite, and Chiaki's resentment to cause major headaches to the terrorists, whose villainous leader Utsugi (Sato Koichi) is as smart as he is handicapped.

It won't serve any purpose to retell the rest of the film. Suffice to say that Togashi effects several escapes, each less probable than the last---my favorite has to be the one where he got flushed with icy water down the pipe, swimming about 3 km, to emerge in the middle of the frosty mountain, where he apparently manages to warm up by burning some paper---all the while killing terrorists one by one. With each kill, Chiaki (who you should recall has been in terrorists' keep all the while) resents him even more, stubbornly hanging on to the belief that he will abandon them all. Perhaps predictably, Togashi saves the dam, saves the dame, and saves the day.

There are way too many cliches in this film to make it endearing. It even fails where Die Hard succeeded nicely. Take, for example, the bumbling cops. They spend their entire time arguing back and forth about the ransom, with the local chief (elbowed out of the proceedings by the equivalent of the nasty Feds) pondering pencil circles on paper. When it finally dawns on him what the devious terrorist plan is, the police never do anything with it! This entire part of the plot served absolutely no purpose whatsoever!

Or the incredible exploits of one Togashi. Check this out: at one point he is being hunted by a helicopter and a gunner who has to be the worst shot in the world. Anyhow, Togashi blows up his snowmobile causing a major avalanche, which downs the chopper, but puts nary a snowflake on him, even though he was right beneath it. I was wondering just how he is going to survive this, but the director was apparently unperturbed by such minor detail.

The only interesting twist was the terrorist who wasn't a terrorist (Koshiba Takuya), which could have been made into a welcome diversion. However, we never quite find out what his plan was before he gets killed. With him too, the entire part of the screenplay was absolutely useless and worthless. Finally, what was the point of having Chiaki involved in all this? I am guessing it has something to do with Togashi's promise to "take care of her" (what, in the world, does that mean?) which is supposedly his motivating force throughout. I guess without this, he would have been your average cowardly dam operator. Or so the production notes would have us believe.

The film does have some very nice location shots, but Wakamatsu's predilection for slow-mo shots can be unnerving at times. Much of the scenery is wasted and a lot of the drama disappears when Togashi braves the blizzard for the umpteenth time. Even one 3 km trek in the blinding snow would have been sufficient to convince us of his superhuman endurance... three such treks make it laughably unbelievable.

The Ocean Shores DVD is pretty decent, just make sure you get the one with the woman on the front picture. The other one does not have English subs regardless of what the back says. There are some nice extras, but not too much. Some of them are translated in English, although the filmographies are not, which is good or bad, depending on whether you would want to see more stuff with these guys. I, for one, am not convinced I want to see another film with Mr. Oda, although I can easily see myself watching one with Ms. Matsushima.

December 18, 2002