The Guardian is a sincere and capably
executed film, if ultimately also a dispensable one.

Despite copious exclamations of “Hoo-rah!” and the like, the
sort of machismo on display in The
Guardian is fairly tame, and the movie isn’t an overt and specific portrait
of American military culture in the vein of last year’s Annapolis. Set
in Alaska, the story centers
around the mentor-protégé relationship between a veteran Coast Guard Rescue
Swimmer and one of his young charges. Ben Randall (Costner) is legendary
amongst his peers, but after a terrible accident claims his crew, he’s haunted
by the memory. His commander temporarily reassigns him to an instructional
post, where we meet Jake Fischer (Kutcher), an ex-high school swim champion who
has spurned a variety of college scholarship offers to give the Coast Guard’s “A” School for Rescue Divers a crack. The
elite program has a washout rate of more than 50 percent, but Jake readily
distinguishes himself, even if his focus on training records makes Ben uncertain
that he’s there for the right reasons — to save lives.

While its rescue sequences are credibly handled, the movie
lacks the gigantic scope and additional nonfiction heft of Wolfgang Petersen’s The Perfect Storm. What director Andrew
Davis’ The Guardian has in abundant
earnestness, it also matches in recycled conventions, as various military pic
genre touchstones — tortured flashbacks and nightmares, unconventional training
methodologies, inter-branch antagonism, romance with a townie — all receive
hearty workout over the course of 139 minutes.

A good half hour or more could easily have been cleaved off
of The Guardian were it not for the
picture’s dutiful insistence to hit all the beats of synthetic conflict, from
Ben’s crumbling marriage, a casualty of workaholic neglect, to an arbitrary
second act detour in a confrontational Navy bar. A love story between Jake and
local schoolteacher Emily Thomas (Melissa Sagemiller), while bringing a wisp of
early levity to the proceedings, is also a non-starter.

Ironically, too, it’s this persistence in attempting to give
Ben and Jake lives outside of work that robs the movie of a chance to get to
know any of its other characters beyond purely the functions they serve in the
story. Ron L. Brinkerhoff’s script is a fine model of structure, but offers
little in the way of interpersonal insightfulness, and its rescue finale is a
somewhat credibility-stretching combination of all tests rolled into one. A
late play at mythic significance also misfires.

Costner, unlike some aging semi-contemporaries, seems quite
at ease sliding into grizzled mentor-type roles, and he already has such a
pleasantly well-worn demeanor suited to these roles that you glimpse, even in
something as predictable as The Guardian,
a successful future in substantive movies about aging, busted romances and
reconciliation.

Kutcher, meanwhile, showed in A Lot Like Love that he could subjugate his sitcom instincts and
play the “normal,” orbiting body to a more colorful or outrageous character, at
least in a comedic/romantic context. In the role of apprentice here, however,
he’s less successful. Part of this is a function of how the character of Jake
is written — vaguely haunted by a secret we know will eventually come out, but
not truly obstinate enough to create substantial friction with Ben — but his
performance is also uneven, hampered early on by indistinct, wide-eyed stares.

The Guardian is housed
in a regular Amray plastic case with snap-shut hinges, which in turn slides
into a glossy cardboard slipcover. The movie is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic
widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, and comes with complementary Dolby
digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks in English, French and Spanish. Supplemental
bonus materials kick off with a genial, two-handed feature-length audio commentary
track from Davis and Brinkerhoff in which the pair discuss paring to the script,
plus location and production detail. You get the sense that theirs was a close
collaboration, particularly when Brinkerhoff talks about being the only writer
on the project, and his enjoyment at seeing the movie through completion.

An 11-minute making-of featurette delves further into elements
of the movie’s partial Louisiana shoot and water tank work, and is replete with
enough choice talking head interview bits to give an overview that feels
substantially longer. A second featurette, clocking in at five and a half minutes,
focuses on the real-life Coast Guard, a bit of its history, and the fine job
they do of rescuing those in distress. Finally, excised material also gets a
workout in the form of seven minutes of deleted scenes — including a further
fleshing out of Jake and Emily’s relationship — as well as a much more “Hollywood”
(and thankfully unused) alternate ending, all with additional commentary from
Davis and Brinkerhoff. A small collection of preview trailers round things out. C+ (Movie) B (Disc)