REVIEWED - THE GUARDIAN: THE hero of The Guardian, Ben Randall (played by Kevin Costner) is an ace rescuer with the US coast guard service in Alaska, but screenwriter Ron L Brinkerhoff has tapped into the compendium of movie cliches to invest him with the stock characteristics of most screen detectives who have entered their 50s, as Costner himself did last year, writes Michael Dwyer
Consequently, Randall is riddled with guilt after the death of his colleagues in a rescue accident and traumatised by flashbacks to that incident, brooding after the break-up of his marriage, and morosely spending his nights alone with a bottle of whiskey. An old friend, a bar owner and singer (Bonnie Bramlett) who dispenses pearls of homespun philosophy, tells him that his life sounds like a country song, and that he's a bigamist, because he's been married to his job.
In an equally unsubtle line, his wife (Sela Ward) tells him that she's leaving him because "it's time for me to rescue myself." The waterlogged dialogue even throws in a reference to Randall keeping his marriage afloat.
Relieved of his coast guard duties, Randall reluctantly takes a post as instructor at a Chicago academy where swimmers train for entry into the rescue service. As is de rigueur for troubled mentors in movies, Randall's methods are unorthodox and draw the disapproval of his peers, but of course, they work.
Living proof is provided in the tall, muscled frame of his star pupil, Jake Fischer (Ashton Kutcher), a cocky young man with ambition and attitude to burn. Life lessons follow as inevitably as night follows day in this hybrid of Top Gun and The Perfect Storm, as the two protagonists recognise aspects of themselves in each other. Randall's students address him as Senior Chief, while his colleagues simply call him Senior, but it's only a matter of time before he and Fischer have bonded so closely that the younger man is using the more intimate shorter term.
Director Andrew Davis specialises in action movies (The Fugitive, Collateral Damage, Under Siege). Here the effects-laden sea rescue sequences are proficiently staged, making particularly effective use of sound - and offering some essential dramatic relief in a blandly formulaic and predictable movie that crawls along for more than two hours.
