THE GUARDIAN

I'm sure I'm not the first one who, when I saw the ads for The Guardian, said, "A-ha! It's Top Gun meets The Perfect Storm!" When I mentioned to a pal that I was going to see this movie, she specifically asked me to let her know if Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher (as the legendary old guy and the hot shot young guy, respectively) get to make out (oh, there was such promise in Top Gun for such militaristic fraternizing!). But, alas, no such luck. Instead, we get to enjoy a somewhat schitzophrenic rah-rah movie that is way too long, and is wayyyy too predictable—yet a movie that still surprises with some impressively emotional heft in the midst of all its chest thumping.

Instead of Top Gun's Navy, or G.I. Jane's Marines, it is the under-exposed Coast Guard that gets the spotlight in The Guardian. Specifically, the movie showcases the Guard's tough-as-nails rescue swimmers. When you are sinking on a fishing boat in the middle of Alaska's chilly Bering Sea, or you are waiting for rescue on top of your house in flooded New Orleans, these peeps will STILL come and get you (and thank goodness for them!).

The film's plot is as cliched as any movie in this genre. Kevin Costner plays Ben Randall, an old-school Coast Guard rescue swimmer based in Kodiak, Alaska. He is the Best in Show since his days at the Academy, having rescued all sorts of hapless people in the worst circumstances. So of course, on one rescue things go horribly wrong based on one of his spur-of-the-moment decisions, and Ben is the only survivor of his beloved team. He is haunted by the loss of his pals, and his wife—typecast Sela Ward, yet again playing a wife/nurse (see also The Day After Tomorrow, et al)—dumps him because he's married to his job. So Ben gets sent on sabbatical to the Academy to teach the latest rescue-swimmer-wannabes.

Enter Ashton Kutcher's Jake Fischer. He is the Tom Cruise character: He mouths off with over-confidence, yet has the skills to back up his boasting. He gets a love interest whom he woos in a bar in front of his friends (really!). And he is often wet. But he has a secret that holds him back, that keeps him from achieving greatness as a swimmer. He (and Ben) must get over their own personal tragedies in order to shine at what they do best.

So The Guardian tries to do two things—one which it does well, and one which it does not. The crappy part of the film, which is a solid 2/3rds, is a forgettable military training drama where we wait impatiently for Ashton Kutcher's character to grow up and become a man through discipline. Snore. The good parts of the film are (unsurprisingly) the nail-biting rescue scenes, which will make you become a landlubber for life, and (more surprisingly) the random parts of affecting human drama that got me choked up. I say random, because they come from nowhere with the power of their emotion; particularly tender and sad moments between Costner and Ward, and the weepy face-your-past scene between the younger and older man. These scenes were done really well, and made me wonder what kind of movie The Guardian COULD have been if it was tightened up and turned into a REAL drama.

As it is, The Guardian is not an awful addition to the military drama (see Annapolis for true crap). On-location shooting in Alaska and coastal British Columbia showcase nicely the elements that these rescue swimmers face (brrrrrr), and all the stormy, wavey scenes match the intensity of any moments in that other famous wavey movie The Perfect Storm. Though it is not a great film, it is kind of inspiring, and I'm sure will aptly do its duty as an effective recruiting tool for the U.S. Coast Guard.