"Whiteout" is pretty much a wipeout.

Movies live and die by the written word. A bad script and bad dialog scuttle the most ravishing of visual styles and the savviest of performances.

This Antarctic murder mystery directed by Dominic Sena has more "say-what?" moments in its logic than it has snowflakes. Not to mention too many ostensibly smart people doing stupid things.

What sane character would open a canister that's supposed to contain radioactive material just to satisfy her curiosity? And that's just one of many head-scratchers posed by Sena ("Gone in Sixty Seconds") and a quartet of writers.

The movie's based on a graphic novel by Greg Rucka, and it has the kind of B-grade underpinnings that graphic novels thrive on. But it lacks the kind of giddy self-awareness that mark the genre and its best movie adaptations.

Kate Beckinsale, a competent actress who seems committed to low-brow escapism, plays Carrie, a U.S. marshal. She's stationed at a research facility at the South Pole, doing a self-imposed penance for a traumatic incident in her past.

Carrie's cop duties are generally routine until a body turns up. The victim was murdered with an ice ax and Carrie goes into investigative overdrive.

We know at this point that the killing is probably linked to the crash of a Russian cargo plane in the 1950s and the killer's motivation comes from what the plane contained. Meanwhile, other bodies turn up and Carrie, herself, is stalked.

Because of the killings, the head of the multinational station orders an evacuation of its numerous inhabitants. So why doesn't he stop this costly and disruptive exodus when the apparent killer is caught? Because Carrie and a couple of her cohorts wouldn't then be stranded alone over the winter, of course. That's just one of many plot holes you could drive a snow plow through.

Among the other inhabitants are Tom Skerritt as a kindly doctor, Gabriel Macht as a United Nations investigator and Columbus Short as an ice pilot. The actors are adequate in their duties, but the lines they deliver are generally clunky.

The South Pole exteriors are gorgeous when not obscured by blizzards but the interiors are flat and the character interactions have all the pizazz of soap opera set pieces.

"Whiteout" wants to deliver thrills and chills. It gets it half right.