They should put Wite-Out on the script and try again.

It has been a while since we have seen a misfire on the scale of "Whiteout." This Antarctic cop story flows like molasses in January, its plodding pace underscoring the cast's lack of chemistry, the monotonous visuals and TV-level plotting.

Trading her sexy shrink-wrap latex outfit from the "Underworld" series for a hooded winter coat, Kate Beckinsale plays Carrie Stetko, a U.S. marshal investigating the continent's first recorded murder. The deceased, who seems to have fallen from a mountainside but had no climbing gear, is what they call "a sticker." He's fixed to the surface of the ice when Carrie discovers him, a frozen, inert mass. A symbol for the movie, you might say.

The film takes its title from the weather condition that whips blinding white show so furiously that you can't see six inches in front of you. Those are the conditions many of the story's chase scenes are shot in, and when several figures in lookalike parkas are moving in slow motion against a snow-gusting, undefined background, the tension suffers.

Dominic Sena, director of the frantic "Gone in Sixty Seconds," seems to have misplaced his action chops. He opens the film with one of the most uninvolving airplane crashes ever recorded on film.

That accident, involving a Russian cargo plane carrying Something Important during the Cold War, sets the plot in motion. The corpse Carrie finds is part of a plot to recover its contents. At the same time, she is working to recover her confidence. She came to the South Pole from Miami, where she was attacked by a prisoner in her custody, with damaging effect to her career and her psyche. We know the scars are deep because Sena helpfully replays the incident a half dozen times.

Beckinsale's one moment of comedy comes early, and unintentionally. She's barely been introduced before she gives a nod to her "Underworld" fan base by stripping off her goose-down burka and stepping into a steamy shower. She's interrupted by a knock at the door and shouts "Just a minute."

She doesn't add, "I'm doing the gratuitous skin scene," but she might as well have.