Stormy Weather

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By Newsweek Editors

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The real event that's the basis of White Squall is so dramatic that you wish a camera had been along to film it. In 1961, the sailing ship Albatross, a kind of floating prep school for boys, was hit by a freakish storm in the Gulf of Mexico and sank, losing four of the teenage students and two of the ship's crew. The 13 survivors, including ship skipper Christopher Sheldon, later took part in a hearing that raised important issues of seamanship and responsibility. The movie, written by Todd Robinson and directed by Ridley Scott, overlays some formulaic elements on this powerful material; the story only intermittently breaks through its two-genre crust (school and sea flicks).

So we get Chuck, the nice noble kid, Dean the tough guy, Frank the spoiled rich boy, Gil the scared virgin and other classic avatars of adolescence. The skipper (Jeff Bridges) is a blend of Captain Bligh and Mr. Chips. Greeting his pupils/crew, he proclaims a forbiddingly Nietzschean ethos of "character," forged on "mountaintops, deserts and battlefields." He forces the acrophobic Gil to climb the rigging and sends Frank home when he kills a dolphin. Supplanting their variously screwed-up fathers, Sheldon leads the boys on a voyage into manhood that's brutally aborted when the squall strikes.

This is what Ridley Scott has been waiting for. The visualholic director of "Alien" and "Blade Runner" gives us the storm in all of its lightning-crackling, wind-yowling, wave-heaving, human-flinging grandeur. In the last chapter, the Caine Mutinyish tribunal, Chris and his crew learn the final lessons in what has become a rite of passage for them all. Bridges, the most emotionally honest of actors, lends Chris a dimension of tormented idealism. The young actors are, well, faithful to their types, led by the Tom Cruise-y Scott Wolf as Chuck. A vital feminine presence is supplied by Caroline Goodall as Alice Sheldon, the skipper's wife, conscience and ship's doctor. The versatile, British-born Goodall (a stone baddie in "Cliffhanger") is a strong, sensitive actor and has a pure beauty that eclipses our zillion-dollar Demis and Julias.

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