Movie Review: The Guardian ***

For this review, I need to furnish full disclosure at the outset: I am a major anti-fan of Kevin Costner. Ashton Kutcher is not much better in my book, but for at least once in their lives they managed to put together a good movie. "The Guardian" celebrates the elite rescue swimmers of the Coast Guard. Yes, the Coast Guard actually does have elite personnel and they richly deserve the label. These are the swimmers who jump out of helicopters into frigid waters in Alaska to rescue fishermen whose boats have been wrecked. The helicopter crew lowers a basket or a cable and the rescue swimmer puts the survivors in the basket and sends them up to safety. There are 300 rescue swimmers currently, three of whom are women.
In "The Guardian," Kevin Costner is an old rescue swimmer who accepts a slot as the head trainer at the Rescue Swimmer course and Ashton Kutcher is the maverick hot shot from college who thinks he walks on water. Costner has marital problems, of course, (when was the last time you saw a happily married military man in a movie) Costner and Kutcher both have a tragic past and in time they discover how much in common they share. The trainer reinforces the themes of teamwok and self-sacrifice constantly as the young swimmers attempt to complete an extremely difficult 18-week course. The training sequences furnish the highlights of the movie. Recently in real life, the course started with twelve trainees and all of them washed out in the first week. The current class has condensed in number from twelve down to four. Needless to say, the course is unforgiving.
"The Guardian" is very long, 139 minutes, it suffers from anti-climax, and several subplots are completely unnecessary. Costner's marital issues do not advance the plot, nor do Kutcher's trysts with a local girl. I guess getting into bed on the second date is standard operating procedure now. The language is not bad, however, and the message is good overall. I would say it is worth seeing once.