Chatverock Takes itself way too seriously

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

mattkratz You might pick this movie up expecting just a "disaster at sea" type movie, but there is more to it. Yes, it does feature the title sea storm and ship disaster, but it also features a good story and character study leading up towards it. Jeff Bridges stars as a skipper who leads his team of schoolboys on a ship as they learn about discipline and teamwork. The storm scene at the end was well filmed and will remind you a bit of The Perfect Storm. I also liked the ensuing trial. I liked the movie, the cast, the story, and the characters. You will too.

Terrell Howell (KnightsofNi11) 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.

jzappa Herd a crew of fledgling white guys, apportion good and bad characteristics among them, and have them learn through tough examples that it is best to stick together and adhere to command. Women provide a supplementary function. The intrinsic outlook of the movie is that boys grow up to be men who do cool things together and then go out on Saturday night looking for compliant enough girls.Nearly all movies in this genre have one kid with a wealthy, contemptible father who appears without notice, humiliating his son and requiring unreasonable things of him. And also a kid with a closeted neurotic fear. And a kid who is fearful that he doesn't have what it takes. All such characters feature here, although they are a little hard to tell apart since, rather than conveniently button-down casting, Scott has furnished the posse with brawny, sun-tanned young sorts with contour haircuts who seem like they hang out in Dockers ads. The dubious altruistic goal, the arbitrary crew members and the mandatory array of particular conflicts keep the movie from zooming in more on individual characters and the objective of cultivating superjock confederates. Nevertheless, there are some fine qualities to this film. There is the dimension of the ship itself, the more often than not opulent cinematography, the sumptuous atmosphere of release over nights in port, and the storm sequence near the end.The most powerful sequence though is one that obliges more respect than the movie surrounding it. It is the death of a dolphin at the hands of one of the shipmates. We understand this boy's need to inflict violence in the state of mind to which he's been driven, but Scott lets us know full well how bewildered and betrayed the dolphin feels, one moment playing with the other shipmates and the next being put out of its misery on the dry deck of a ship as its family flees the unpredictable humans. It is an extremely difficult scene to watch, but it is a deeply honorable one, because it brings out the truly humanistic sides of the characters and us, the audience, when confronting the reality of the truly benign maligned.As for the storm I will not say much, save to note that the title refers to a sudden and violent windstorm phenomenon at sea which is not accompanied by the black clouds generally characteristic of a windstorm, but instead white-capped waves and broken water, a meager warning to any unfortunate seafarer caught in its path. And so it does, in storm footage of extravagant wrath, and of the true dwarfing effect the sea has on any man-made power. Indeed, the man-made consequence of the storm is a trial presided over by the Coast Guard, at which sides are taken and diatribes are performed that will ring quite common to anyone who remembers the main feature of most any late '80s-90s mainstream American movie.Scott's anamorphically shot sailing film could have been wiser and more personal in the way it develops its characters. Its inherent ideals are preferable the less you contemplate them. However, I enjoyed the movie for the headlong visceral vitality and unexpected, almost incongruous humanism of its adventure.

d-butler288 This is a great film about teenagers learning about themselves and facing a challenge together. It is very interesting that this film avoids the usual clichés of an action movie and develops characters more than just stereotypes. I would describe this film as a drama with a magnificent backdrop of uncontrollable natural events...storms and rough seas. Sort of a parody on some the difficulties that these young men were facing. Ridley Scott directs a film which is unique and pushes back the boundaries of genre as have some of his other films such as ALIEN and GLADIATOR. Both of these films are landmarks in their own way. It's hard to think of a film before ALIEN which had similar qualities. The same with GLADIATOR except perhaps its character development which makes a comparison with KUBRICKS Spartacus. As for homo-eroticism, seeing beautiful young male bodies may subjectively be deemed homo-erotic by some people. Does it really matter? Just enjoy the film on your own level as you would other works of art!!!