Director Report Card: Ridley Scott (1996)

9. White Squall

In 1994, Ridley Scott was hired to direct “The Hot Zone.” The proposed film was a thriller, based on the true story of an Ebola outbreak in a primate testing facility in Reston, Virginia. The film got pretty far into pre-production, with Robert Redford and Jodie Foster signing on to star. When “Outbreak” – a rival movie inspired by the same incident – began filming first, “Hot Zone” was abandoned. Eager to keep developing projects for his recently renamed company Scott Free Productions, and probably hoping to recover from the costly flop of “1492: Conquest of Paradise,” Scott immediately signed onto another film. “White Squall” was also inspired by a true story: The 1961 sinking of the schooner Albatross, which was fictionalized in the book “The Last Voyage of the Albatross.” You'd think Scott would want to stay away from boats after the Columbus movie but I guess you go were inspiration takes you.

In the early sixties, a group of teenage boys are shipped off by their parents to spend several months at sea. This is in hopes of toughening them up and making them more fully-formed men. Our narrator is sixteen year old Chuck. The boat is a schooner named the Albatross. The captain is Christopher Sheldon but the boys just call him Skipper. Under the stewardship of the tough-but-fair Skipper, the boys face challenges, form bonds, and learn about the world. Their greatest obstacle arrives when a white squall – a massive ocean storm without any proceeding dark clouds – sweeps over the boat.

In many ways, “White Squall” is a totally typical coming-of-age drama. Over the course of the film, the boys are tested. Many of them butts head but, while at sea, they grow closer to one another. Naturally, they learn more about each others' problems. One is practically illiterate, another is traumatized by the death of his older brother. They get their sea legs, after a lot of sea-sickness and vomiting. They toughen up and encounter death. Most of all, they grow from being boys to being men. “White Squall” is most beholden to films like “Dead Poets Society,” even including a climatic sequence where the boys stand up for their captain after his professionalism is put on trial. 

The big problem with “White Squall,” especially when compared to better movies like “Dead Poets Society,” is that none of the boys here are horribly distinct. Chuck, our de-facto protagonist, is as bland as can be. His narration is full of generic "inspirational drama" platitudes. Few of the young men have personalities more detailed than a single trait or two, some of them not even getting that. The guys also look similar, with dark hair and brawny young bodies, making it hard to tell them apart at times. As several Letterboxd users eagerly point out, the cast is as overwhelmingly white as the squall described in the title.

There's about six boys on the boat and it's frequently hard to tell them apart at times. Only two really stick out to any degree. Gil is the sensitive one. He has an intense fear of heights, leading to a moment where he pees his pants while forced to climb the rigging. This is because his beloved older brother fell to his death when Gil was young. We know all of this because he carries a photo of his deceased brother with him everywhere. The only other boy that is memorable is Frank, whose dad is a rich asshole. This causes him to act out in various ways, such as getting drunk and smashing some lamps. Or murdering an innocent dolphin with a harpoon gun and then refusing to put it out of its misery. You might notice that these actions make Frank memorable for all the wrong reason.

Frank obviously has some father issues. He's so tired of his dad telling him what to do that, when called away from the boat for a steak dinner, Frank ends up getting into a fist fight with his own father. Obviously, all the boys are eager to prove themselves, to define their own versions of masculinity apart from their families. Their Skipper, naturally, becomes a father figure to all of them. Considering Skipper yells a lot and is constantly pushing the boys out of their comfort zones, to the point of questionable abuse, you have to wonder if he's a quality role model for the boys or not. I guess he does preach about responsibility and self-respect. But I kind of doubt a hard-ass sailor is the right person to resolve a literal boat load of daddy issues. 

You might be wondering if “White Squall” taking place in the early sixties has any deeper purpose. (Outside of appealing to the boomer nostalgia that was commonplace in the nineties, that is.) The answer to that question is, as far as I can tell, not really. Aside from a few golden oldies on the soundtrack, there's really only one instance where the time period becomes relevant. That's when the Albatross drifts close to Cuban waters. Since this is not long before the Cuban Missile Crisis – which a radio speech from JFK helpfully informs us of – there's a tense encounter with Cubans boarding the boat and insisting to search for any possible refugees. Aside from that one, short scene, this movie could've been set in almost any decade in the last fifty years. 

Considering I can recall “White Squall” playing on the Disney Channel at least once in my youth – the film was co-produced by Disney subsidiary Hollywood Pictures – the movie surprised me in one regard: It's honest about how horny teenage boys are. The guys discuss their sex lives from the beginning, teasing Gil for still being a virgin. They visit a brothel while at port, which turns out to be an extended prank. Later, they encounter a group of Dutch school girls, who are very eager to get to know the boys. One of the guys successfully gets laid, after a girl stripes in front of him. This scene just narrowly avoids turning this PG-13 movie into an R-rated one, thanks to some careful camera placement. I definitely did not expect that. (I'm guessing that entire sequence got cut from the Disney Channel broadcast.)

There's a reason some stray horniness ends up being the most memorable thing about “White Squall.” This film feels distressingly generic for a Ridley Scott movie. Yeah, you can spot a few of the director's visual trademarks. The token rays of lights in a darkened room can be spotted at least once, when one of the guys walk through their quarters in the boat. Later, after arriving on a picturesque jungle island, we get some billowing clouds of white mist. That's definitely among the movie's most optically appealing moments. Otherwise, “White Squall” is not that visually distinctive. Long stretches of this film feel like just about anyone could have directed it, which is very discouraging indeed. 

At least the titular white squall is pretty cool. Occurring in the last third of the movie, it begins with a massive wall of white water rolling towards the ship. The wave floods the boat, tossing the boys head-over-heels, and eventually dunking the entire Albatross into the ocean. Forcing your actors to splash around in actual water, blowing and spraying everywhere, grants a feeling of genuine intensity to the sequence. It's also “White Squall” at its grimmest, as it quickly becomes apparent that some of the young sailors won't be rescued. Even if the rest of the movie feels like the filmmaker working at half-power, the storm proves that Ridley Scott still knows how to direct the hell out of an action scene.

Now let's look at “White Squall's” cast. Jeff Bridges plays Skipper, obviously the showiest part in the movie. Bridges plays Skipper in a very shout-y manner. He shouts at the boys when they disappointed him and he shouts when he's proud of them. Probably his best bit of acting is the aforementioned dolphin scene. If only because a character proving a point about responsibly by mercy-killing a large porpoise is hard to forget. Otherwise, Bridges jacks up the gruffness and largely forgets to include the lovable part of the “tough but lovable” mentor role. It's an unusually bland performance from an actor who is usually more colorful than this.

As I said, the younger cast members are not very memorable. I don't know if this is an example of a talented cast let down by an underwhelming script or a thin script paired with a mediocre cast. Scott Wolf is completely forgettable as Chuck. Jeremy Sisto plays Frank, the rich asshole, which at least plays the somewhat smug quality that Sisto inevitably brings to all of his roles. Ryan Phillippe does occasionally show a touching vulnerability as Gil. Otherwise, I doubt I could pick any of these actors out of a line-up. I know Balthazar Getty is in here somewhere but God help me if I could tell you which character he played.

“White Squall” would be another flop for Ridley Scott, grossing only ten million dollars against a 38 million dollar budget. I want to make some joke about nineties audiences not wanting anything to do with boat-related Ridley Scott movies but I'm going to chalk “White Squall's” failure up to it not being very good. That ship wreck scene is cool though. The weirdest thing about this movie is that its trailer would eventually become a meme among Q-Anon nut jobs, due to the trailer coincidentally featuring a few of the dubious movement's catchphrases. Because life in the 21st century is very strange indeed. By the way, “The Hot Zone” would eventually get made into a television mini-series in 2019, which Scott produced. I haven't seen it but, by all accounts, it's pretty good. [Grade: C]