Another Scary Recruit Movie

While we're talking movies, I sat through the latest Kevin Costner stinker, The Guardian.

It's truly awful. Formula cinema at its worst... tedious, predictable, boring. If you haven't seen it and don't want to know what you're in for then warning... spoiler coming... stop reading now.

This film is "Officer and a Gentleman" meets "Top Gun" meets "GI Jane".
It's got all the elements...
The military style boot camp
The unreasonably tough sergeant
The recruits, each with some quirky personality disorder
The "you're in or you're out" challenges

Costner is a US Coast Guard "rescue swimmer", the most decorated of all time. He's the guy who jumps out of the helicopter to save you when you're boat's sinking. A real American hero... except that there's this accident and the rest of his helicopter crew, including his best friend, are killed... best friend dying in his arms, of course.

Now I probably don't need to point out that you shouldn't get Costner's performance confused with anything remotely associated with acting. It's more closely associated with a more honest industry... lumber.

So you're getting the picture, right? Rescue goes wrong... CO decides Costner needs some time to get his head back together again, and sends him to the Coast Guard's training facility as a guest instructor, where he vents his torment on poor, unsuspecting recruits. The focus of most of his nastiness is a recruit named Fischer, played by Ashton Kutcher, who was a high school swim champ with "a troubled past".

But wait, there's more. Add the marriage break down between Costner and his wife, played by Sela Ward. You'll remember her as Gregory House's ex. Costner's really married to the job, not the wife, which is very dumb 'cause Sela's one fine looking woman.

There's the obligatory bar scene, where the other recruits bet hero-in-waiting Fischer a hundred bucks that he can't pick up some chick at the bar. He does, of course, because said chick offers to pretend if he'll split the hundred with her. Of course, they end up having a "casual fling", because she knows he's a recruit blah blah blah. It is remarkable, though, how much Melissa Sagemiller looks like a young Sela Ward in this movie. Really. It's almost insulting.

Anyway... there's the other obligatory bar scene too, where the USCG recruits go to a "Navy" bar and get into a CG v Navy fight, which means Fischer stands up said girlfriend who's waiting patiently in a swank restaurant up the road for their first real "date" (as opposed to their frequent casual bonking).

The recruits graduate, of course, and Fischer is sent to the Kodiak Alaska Coast Guard Station, which just happens to be the home base of, yes, you guessed it, Costner, who, after his stint as instructor, is now ready to leap back into the ocean.

And at the end, Fischer goes back to the primary school where casual girlfriend's a teacher (oh, now wasn't that predictable) and says "I don't do casual", after which they kiss passionately in front of a class full of 7 year olds. This is after Costner dies, sacrificing himself for the life of his younger protege during a daring rescue where the USCG's inferior equipment breaks, again.

Oh please. Pass me the bucket.

Frankly, I didn't know the script writers' strike had been going on for that long, because it's a certainty that no professional script writer was involved in this movie.