Released in early 1996 and directed by Ridley Scott, "White Squall" is a drama/adventure based on a true story about a group of American teenage boys who crew a sailing ship and discover discipline, adventure, courage, camaraderie, babes and the worst this world has to offer. Jeff Bridges stars as the captain, Caroline Goodall as his physician wife, John Savage as a teacher and Julio Oscar Mechoso as the cook. The main protagonist and narrator, Chuck Gieg, is played by Chris Wolf. Other teens are played by Ryan Phillippe, Jeremy Sisto, et al. (I'd name more but they're mostly so nondescript I can't remember 'em).While "White Squall" tries to be "Dead Poets Society" on the high seas it somehow doesn't click like that movie and is therefore a mixed bag, which explains why it bombed at the box office. I love the adventure-on-a-sailing-ship plot and there are some bright spots, but the script has a hard time pulling you into the story; and the characters and their situations are often too contrived to be engaging. The Shakespeare-spouting English teacher is a good example, not to mention practically any scene involving the boys. I know the screenplay was based on Chuck Gieg's book, but the producers needed a screenwriter with a creative spark who knew how to write compelling drama, like Tom Schulman.The best part of the movie is the titular storm and the shocking events thereof, which effectively perks the movie out of the general doldrums of the first two acts. Unfortunately, this thrilling sequence is a bit marred by the artificial melodramatics of the closing court room scene. The bell-ringing part is particularly eye-rolling (which is in contrast to the potent "O Captain! My Captain!" scene in "Dead Poets"). Nonetheless, "White Squall" is worth checking out if you enjoy adventure-on-the-high-seas, with the storm sequence being worth the price of admission.The movie runs 129 minutes and was shot in Malta, Bermuda, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, South Africa, South Carolina, Georgia and England.GRADE: C+ (5.5/10 Stars)

Teenage boys discover discipline and camaraderie on an ill-fated sailing voyage. Thanks to a powerful performance by Jeff Bridges White Squall succeeds into combining both drama and action and it does it in a really good way especially with the ending that i feel it was powerful a lot is this better than previous Ridley Scott movies such as Alien or Gladiator? Hell no but it's definitely better than Prometheus that's for sure also the cast as a whole did a nice job and the film has some really great locations and like i said Bridges nailed it he is such a great actor and this isn't a film i would put a 6.6 maybe a 7.4 or 7.5 would make more sense.

The captain of the Albatross tells his crew, mostly boys of high school age, that the ship is not a toy, and sailing is not a game. But that is exactly what they are. They are not sailing for some practical purpose like earning a living by fishing. They are going sailing for the fun of it. Of course, the fun masquerades as a rite of passage for the boys that will turn them into men, but whom do they think they are kidding? If they want to play sailor instead of staying in school and then getting a job, fine, but don't insult our intelligence with a bunch of macho malarkey. When the title storm comes along and kills a bunch of them, I suppose the ones who survive get extra manliness points, but they still need to finish school and get a job.

What happens when you throw together too many uninteresting characters and try to make something way more dramatic than it needs to be. You get Ridley Scott's White Squall. This film is based on a true story from 1960 when a group of schoolboys took to the open seas to learn about discipline and becoming a man. The ship is called the Albatross and the captain is the hard boiled Christopher Sheldon, played by Jeff Bridges. The boys learn about what it takes to become a man and the self discipline needed to be an honorable and respected individual. But it is a tragic storm that teaches them some difficult lessons about life and death.This film is, for the most part, a character driven story. This is a real problem when you could care less about any of the characters. Character with daddy issues. Check. Macho man who can't read or write. Check. Highly intelligent character that, despite all his book smarts, still has a lot to learn. Check. One dimensional narrator. Check. The list goes on, but my point is that this film has all the necessary stereotypes for your most typical coming of age story. Thus this film permits nothing new or interesting. Another problem could be that there are just too many characters. The film tries to develop all of the boys and they are subsequently underdeveloped. You don't have enough time or information to develop a connection with any one character and so everything that happens with these boys is incredibly uninteresting. There is also a very flat dynamic between characters. They are all pretty white boys that come from upper class American families making the characters devoid of any kind of diversity.The biggest issue here is that the film truly believes it possesses everything I just said it didn't have. It tries so hard to be a gripping drama but its character development completely missed the mark, making all of these "dramatic" scenes silly and moronic. I could care less about one boys success at learning how to read and write from the help of two other boys because his character is obnoxious, underdeveloped, and flat. Yet the film tries so hard to elicit an emotional response here that I want to ignore it even further.Aesthetically this film is a different story. Ridley Scott is in no way a bad director, it just seems like he had a serious string of duds post Blade Runner. He makes the most out of White Squall with an epic scale ocean scope. The climactic scene of the film is the terrible storm that hits the Albatross and Scott shoots this scene magnificently. He manages to make this the only truly dramatic moment of the film and the scene manages to be as riveting as is possible for such a lackluster film. In a way this makes the film more of a disappointment. If I had cared more about the film before the epic storm scene, this scene would have been more powerful than it already was. It really makes me wish more effort had been put into the first two thirds of the film because the last third, even after the storm scene, is pretty decent. The film also concludes very well, making the film a would be satisfying experience.White Squall is an overall mediocre cinematic experience. Not nearly enough effort was put into developing the array of characters who were the most important focus of this film. Ridley Scott directs as well as he can for such a poor script, but it doesn't save White Squall from being a major disappointment.