Boys on the boat saga: Less about squall than male bonding

By Laksmi Pamuntjak-Djohan

JAKARTA (JP): For any gifted director, no burden is bigger than that of living up to a high standard he or she has set, and this seems to apply even more to Ridley Scott, from whose hands monumental films like Blade Runner and Alien have emerged.

This is not to say that White Squall doesn't have the right potential. The script is based on a true story about a floating prep school that plied the waters of the Caribbean during the Kennedy administration. Home to an imperious captain and his wife, a Shakespeare-quoting English teacher, a Cuban cook, and 13 teenage boys, the two-masted brigantine Albatross generates tough lessons through hardship and tragedy, especially when it is caught in a weather anomaly known as a "white squall". In nautical lingo, a white squall is a mini-hurricane of blinding rain and lightning that can take the sturdiest ship and snap it in two.

Although it is undoubtedly pitched as "Dead Poets Society on a boat", the idea of a bunch of smooth-faced boys thrown together to learn discipline, self-reliance, camaraderie, and self- discovery still has its appeal to a wide audience. And since rite-of-passage isn't a process limited to the stern halls and lush playing fields of exclusive prep schools, dismissing this film as yet another lazy spin-off would be unfair.

For lazy it certainly isn't. In fact, chronicling the physical aspects of the Albatross' journey alone is no idle feat. As the boat island-hops through St. Vincent, St. Lucia and Grenada, before it ventures to the Galapagos and the South Seas, the scenery is gorgeous. The feel of the boat, the changing moods of the vast ocean and the delicious sense of liberty during starry nights in exotic ports of call are all testimonies of Scott's expert direction.

The storm scene, too, is a knockout of movie-making. Yet the title is not meant to be as self-explanatory. In fact, White Squall isn't supposed to be about a freak storm. Its raison d'etre lies in the sublimity it hopes to achieve in portraying a unique and compelling coming-of-age saga. Thus, it is ironic that the movie ends up being least interesting when it is focused on what is ostensibly its main premise.

Perhaps Ridley Scott takes his cue from his brother Tony's Top Gun. Assemble a group of pretty boys, distribute good and bad qualities among them, and then have them grow up to be men through sticking together and following orders. Women play a secondary role, which is a shame for an actress of Caroline Goodall's caliber, for in this movie she is relegated to dying a lonely and frightful death.

In fact, the derivative script by Todd Robinson is more of a haphazard stringing of only marginally related cliches. The boys claim no knowledge of how to interact with a bunch of Danish girls who come aboard the ship. Sure. They cajole the most inexperienced among them into hiring a prostitute. The daydreamer suddenly conquers his vertigo by climbing up the rigging just to wave goodbye to one of his mates. The gang's bully hits himself in the head and cries repeatedly, "I'm a moron," because he's been caught cheating. Another shoots a dolphin for no reason.

Movies in this genre almost always have a troubled rich kid (Jeremy Sisto) with an obnoxious father who turns up unexpectedly, and expects impossible things of him; a kid with a secret phobia (Ryan Philippe); the quintessential bad boy who gets to clean up his act (Eric Michael Cole); the nonchalant worldly type (Balthazar Getty); and the regular guy wanting to discover the deep meaning of life and ends up narrating the whole thing (Scott Wolf).

The trouble is that it is very hard to tell them apart, because they are all look-alikes who all want to be the next Tom Cruise. So much for the excruciatingly slow pace obviously designed for some serious character-development. Worse, their acting is way below par, with no chemistry among the boys or among anyone else in the cast.

Which necessarily brings us to Jeff Bridges, whose Captain Sheldon character has been an enigma from the start and still remains an enigma in the end. Playing a stoic is Bridges' acknowledged forte, but it doesn't serve the big-hearted, unequivocal nature of this kind of movie. He's a figure head who is supposed to inspire confidence and trust, but his motivations are never clear.

On the surface, he seems the kind of skipper to whom a father might say, "I give you a boy, give me back a man." Indeed, he alternates from scolding the boys to inspiring them with corny homilies such as "If we don't have order, we have nothing. Where we go one, we go all." We are also led to believe that he is an expert seaman, yet the movie is so thin on details that in the final trial scene, where he stands to lose his sailing license, we are not sure if it was he or one of the boys who botched up during the storm.

But it isn't as if the trial makes any sense either. Navigating the ocean is, at best, a risky business. Did the parents really think that any captain would have some special control over the climate, or would willingly allow his boat -- his livelihood -- to go down without any struggle?

The courtroom epilogue is thus ineffectual and anticlimactic. Not only do the characters not matter enough for any emotional resolution to register, but the need to end with a Dead Poets Society-like catharsis only cheapens the conclusion. As Sheldon's charge rally to his defense, ringing a symbolic bell and looking like they're about to burst out "O Captain, my captain", their loyalty seems less a natural progression than a lame plot device. As Bridges remains oblivious, it is clear that he just wants out. After all, the movie runs at two hours and eight minutes - due to Gerry Hambling's poor editing - and by this time, the whole cast, in fact, just wants out.