| Bilgi :If Flyboys was Top Gun with biplanes and trench warfare, then The Guardian is Top Gun with diving gear and big waves. Once again, a cocky young hotshot joins a military academy—in this case, a training school for the U.S. Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers—and once again, the eager young braggart learns more than he expected, as he butts heads with his teachers and experiences a tragedy or two, all of which turn him into a better, more mature, more professional kind of person. However, unlike some films in this genre,
The Guardian is just as interested in the teachers as
it is in the students—at least where Ben Randall (Kevin
Costner) is concerned. Ordinarily, Randall would be out at sea
saving lives, not coaching a bunch of trainees; he is a hero
among rescue swimmers, a legend who has saved countless
people. But his very dedication to his job drives a wedge
between Randall and his wife (Sela Ward), and so one day he
comes home to find that she is leaving him. And then he
loses his best friend, and several others, in a tragic
accident at sea. So his commanding officer (Clancy Brown)
reassigns him to the school, hoping that time away from the
emergency calls will give him a chance to deal with his
losses.
Ashton Kutcher as hotshot Jake
Fischer
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And that's where Randall meets the
aptly-named Jake Fischer (Ashton Kutcher), the former
high-school swimming champ who, not realizing that Randall is
one of his teachers, makes a point of introducing himself to
the school by announcing that he's going to break Randall's
records. And so begins a battle of wills between the two men,
as Randall pushes Fischer and his classmates to their limits,
while Fischer does all he can to show that he can meet and
surpass Randall's expectations—at least when it comes to
swimming fast, holding his breath underwater, and so on.
More important than the physical training, of
course, are the Valuable Life Lessons that Fischer picks up
along the way. After making a bet with his fellow trainees,
Fischer walks up to a woman (Melissa Sagemiller) at a bar and
introduces himself to her, and while their relationship begins
on an officially "casual" note—sex and nothing else—it begins
to show signs of something more serious; they even consider
going out on a date. Meanwhile, Randall digs into Fischer's
background to try to see what motivates him, and he tries to
advise Fischer on how to work within a team, and on how to
cope with the inevitable failures that will be part of his
job.
Kevin Costner as legendary
rescuer Ben Randall
|
The film hews closely to the conventions of
this genre, though at times you can feel that director Andrew
Davis (The Fugitive) and writer Ron L. Brinkerhoff
(D-Tox), wanted it to go just a bit beyond the formula.
On some levels, they are successful. The supporting cast is
especially good, and it is fun to watch the camaraderie
between Randall and the other "mature" people—including Neal
McDonough as one of the more intense instructors, John Heard
as the head of the school, and Bonnie Bramlett as a blues
singer—while Fischer gradually comes to a better, deeper
understanding of his classmates in general and of Randall in
particular. (And just as Fischer becomes more serious as a
rescue swimmer, so Kutcher, normally associated with dumb
comedies like Dude, Where's My Car?, proves he can
handle drama.)
Emily (Melissa Sagemiller) has
her eyes on Jake
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On other levels, however, the film doesn't
quite realize its ambitions. The film is book-ended by
references to a legendary guardian in the water who acts as "a
fisher of men, a last hope for all those who have been left
behind"—but this fleeting hint of fantasy doesn't really fit
with the movie's more down-to-earth sensibility. And the film
as a whole is just plain too long. About an hour and a half
into it, I began to wonder how it would end; obviously
it wouldn't be enough just to show the trainees picking up
their certificates on graduation day. But about two hours into
it, I began to wonder when it would end; it just keeps
on going, and keeps on finding subplots in need of resolution.
Multiple endings were forgivable in The Lord of the Rings:
The Return of the King, because it was part of a trilogy
and there were over ten hours of story to wrap up; but a
simple one-off like this needs to be a little tighter,
especially when so much of what we see feels like it was
copied from some other movie. |
