A Coast Guard rescuer, Ben Randall, is assigned an official job as a trainer at the UCLA Training Facility after the death of his entire crew, and his wife wants a divorce. Ben will discover that a man named Jake has great potentials around that area but his past seems troubled. Ben tries to get closer to Jake's lessons to give him many tips in life and love and maybe make him someone else who does not mean anything to him.
Will definitely rescue some moviegoers from the post-summer doldrums, but someone should have told Davis that there's going to be casualities if he leaves audiences in the water that long.
There's nothing particularly wrong with it, it's just very tedious. Originality doesn't seem to be important and maybe it doesn't have to be as The Guardian is dealing with something true but what that something is the filmmakers seem to know.
Costner is suitably Costneresque -- that is, low-key, stoic, and capable of a wry turn here or there.
Eye for Film
December 07, 2007
There is a breadth of quality about the acting, including a fine performance from Sela Ward as Ben's estranged wife - making a lot more of her role than her meagre scripting suggests.
The Guardian isn't as boring as Annapolis and SWAT, but it's still a feature-length training montage about kids learning the importance of taking it to the limit.
ColeSmithey.com
April 25, 2009
"The Guardian" is a pro-military propaganda movie from Hollywood that attempts to mask its agenda behind the life-saving rhetoric of Coast Guard rescue swimmers.
Kutcher and Costner have a kind of visual chemistry that's just as elusive as the other kind. And the connection and contrast between them remind us that Hollywood isn't as forgiving of older male actors as we like to think.
