(Note From the Grand Panjandrum: When this review was first published, Disney had not yet decided whether or not to release White Squall on laser disk; this review apparently helped them to make up their minds!)
Although White Squall did not fare well in theaters, it is a visually beautiful film which deserves to be seen. (In this reviewer’s opinion, it deserves to be seen on a wide screen in high-end Dolby® stereo, but most people will have to settle for seeing it on tape.)
White Squall is based upon the true story of the Albatross, a sea-going school for young men which suffered a catastrophic wreck when hit by the “white squall” of the title — the mother of all storm waves — a disaster which cost six lives, including that of the wife of the ship’s skipper. The film stars three-time Oscar® nominee Jeff Bridges as Skipper Christopher Sheldon, Caroline Goodall as his doomed wife, and John Savage as the ship's first mate and the boys' teacher of English. Most of the rest of the cast is a "who's who" of hot young Hollywood men: principally Scott "Party of Five" Wolf as Chuck Gieg, whose story this is, with strong support from Balthazar "Natural Born Killers" and "Lost Highway" Getty, Jeremy "Clueless, the movie" Sisto, David "'Blossom' and 'Clueless,' the TV series" Lascher,Jason "Boy Meets World" and "Step By Step" Marsden, Ryan "One Life to Live" and Crimson Tide" Phillippe, Eric Michael "Mr. Holland's Opus" Cole, and Ethan "the artist formerly known as Ethan Randall" Embry, seen recently in Empire Records, That Thing You Do, starring Tom Hanks, and in Vegas Vacation, starring Chevy Chase.
Don't think that director Ridley Scott, known for compelling visuals in his prior hits such as Alien, Blade Runner, and Thelma and Louise, had any intention of carrying this film solely on the basis of boyish beefcake, however. Aside from the gripping true story, the "white squall" of the title is thedefinitive cinematic shipwreck of all time, and James Cameron (already known for topping Scott's Alienwith Aliens) is going to have his hands full trying to get his upcoming zillion-dollar Titanic shipwreck to surpass Scott's white squall sequence.
To film the shipwreck, Scott had about half of the film's schooner, "Eye of the Wind," previously seen in Blue Lagoon and Taipan, rebuilt on the island of Malta, where the full-sized sets were placed in giant water tanks, one of three million gallons, and the other of six million gallons. Using wave machines, two full-sized jet engines, and several tip tanks which each held 5,000 gallons of water, Scott unleashed a man-made disaster on the cast and crew. White Squall doesn't rely upon ridiculous computer-generated cloud-puffs like Twister — these are real forty-foot waves you see in this film, and the stars are really underwater, being pummeled by the wash of tons of water dropping down on the capsized ship, which makes the climactic wreck all the more gut-wrenching: the slightest miscalculation could easily have killed stars Ryan Phillippe and Scott Wolf, who are prominently featured in the wreck scene.
White Squall's principal weakness is its ending, in which a board of review investigates the fatal disaster and Sheldon's possible responsibility for it; not without cause has this part been called "Dead Sailor's Society." One advantage of home video is that it is possible to fast forward through the anti-climactic parts of the ending. On the whole, however, White Squall is worth a view, and if one has the chance to see it on a big screen in a movie theater, it is a must see. On a scale of one-to-ten, White Squall on home video rates a 7.5; theatrically, I call it an 8.5, at least. Buena Vista has yet to a release a laser disk of the film, but it is certainly gorgeous enough to merit laser-quality.
(A note from the Grand Panjandrum: this file really got thrashed while being uploaded, so it is undergoing repairs just now. In the meantime, those of you with more money and time than you need may wish to check out the Quicktime movie of White Squall, but . . . beware! . . . it is a huge consumer of time and meory space.)
