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Directed by Ridley Scott, White Squall is based on the true story of a group of students in their senior year who, in 1960, sign up to crew a sailing ship on a voyage from the Caribbean to the South Pacific and back. Under the command of skipper Christopher Sheldon (Jeff Bridges), the teenage crew is joined by Sheldon's wife, Alice (Caroline Goodall), acting as the ship's doctor and science teacher, McCrea (John Savage), an English teacher and a Cuban cook (Julio Oscar Mechoso). The eight-month, 12,000-mile journey becomes an adventure of unexpected proportions that begins with a tense encounter with a Cuban gunship on the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion and ends, tragically for some, when the Albatross runs into the titular white squall (brilliantly staged and shot), an almost mythical wind-and-lightning storm of intense fury.
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