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88Scott is able to make it fresh and lyrical, as well as give us rousingly exciting scenes of nature in eruption. [02 Feb 1996]
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75Amid the action heroics of White Squall, Bridges creates a character of consequence.
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75I enjoyed the movie for the sheer physical exuberance of its adventure. It is magnificently mounted and photographed.
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75White Squall is a success because the good elements are so well-orchestrated that they dwarf the few obvious flaws. This film offers just about everything, including a twenty-minute white-knuckle sequence and a chance to shed a few tears. In short, it's first-rate entertainment.
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70The story has its corny aspects, but thanks to Scott's skill as an image maker and as a storyteller--proceeding from the very blue and very abstract water seen behind the credits to the climactic, extended storm--this is superior to both "Dead Poets Society" (as a tale about a boys' school and its charismatic teacher) and "Apollo 13" (as a true-life action adventure).
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67White Squall is lovely to look at, but frustrating to behold.
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63A misshapen allegory wrapped around a truly awe-inspiring set piece, Ridley Scott's latest is another waste of his prodigious talent.
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63The 15-minute squall is spectacular and the movie's partial redeemer - the minimum you'd hope for in a movie called White Squall, don't you think? [02 Feb 1996]
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60A curiously compulsive drama that for all its inevitable Dead Sailors' Society trappings is still highly entertaining.
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50As a coming-of-age melodrama and high seas adventure, White Squall is fair.
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50The shipwreck comes too late to rescue movie from endless banalities. [02 Feb 1996]
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50Stunningly photographed, acted with occasional bravura and structured with exacting precision, it fails to sing more than once or twice, and then only briefly. [2 Feb 1996]
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50The 20 or so minutes we spend with the Albatross in the squall is high adventure, to be sure. Everything else is ballast.
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50Despite great scenery, the distinctive visual ideas of Mr. Scott ("Alien," "Blade Runner") and the strong dramatic presence of Mr. Bridges, most of White Squall remains listless and tame.
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50Director Ridley Scott's lavish production isn't totally satisfying, coasting aimlessly at times before suddenly leaping to a more intense dramatic plane.
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50The psychology of the story is shallow, but the action scenes pack a good visual punch.
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Despite a rousing fourth act (out of five), this disappointing adventure movie plays more like: "Dead Poets Goes to Sea." [06 Feb 1996]
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Todd Robinson's script, alas, drags White Squall down. As directed by Ridley Scott, with a surplus of intrusive music and some manic overacting, the movie dips into cliches. [02 Feb 1996]
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30This is, or was, a true story, but invested as it is with relentlessly cliched emotions, it plays like cheap fiction.
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30The failures of White Squall are dismaying as well as perplexing. Director Ridley Scott serves up some ravishing images along the way: the stark geometry of the ship's riggings against an azure sky, crew kids scampering along a verdant ridge toward a volcano's silvery crater lake. But the script is a shambles. [06 Feb 1996]
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25It just doesn't work.
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Positive: 2 out of 2
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ThatemW.8Great family movie and not a bad little sailing movie too. Recomend it to most. Of course not an action movie either.
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JosephB.7