Mediocre.
Sometimes mediocre is the best you can hope for, and sometimes it is good enough. And that is what The Guardian is—relentlessly mediocre.
If you’ve seen the trailer, you pretty much know the entire movie. Ben Randall (Kevin Costner) is the best, if unusually old, rescue swimmer in the U.S. Coast Guard when he experiences the trauma of losing his squad in an accident during a rescue. To give him time to recover, he is sent to “A School” to teach the next group of rookie rescue swimmers. This is the story designed to pull in the older people to the theater; those who remember just how hot Costner was in No Way Out.
For the members of the audience who weren’t yet born when No Way Out hit theaters in 1987, we get Jake Fischer (aka Fish, played by Ashton Kutcher), a cocky young champion swimmer who has passed on an Ivy League education to join the Coast Guard’s elite squad.
© Disney.
Randall is on the tail end of a successful career trying to find ways to cope with the detritus of his private life in the wake of decades married to the job. Fischer is at the birth of a promising career trying to figure out how to control himself and grow into deserving the responsibility he seeks. Strong themes of age giving way to youth, youth learning from wisdom, and swimming with bricks makes you stronger.
The biggest surprise in the movie is that Ashton Kutcher would take on a role that is so certain to bring on comparisons with Tom Cruise and Top Gun. On that basis, he is certain to lose out. The movie in many ways follows the Top Gun template (real world action, school, back to the real world to face a final test) but neither Ashton Kutcher, nor the character of Jake Fischer, have the presence or vitality of Tom Cruise’s Maverick.
That isn’t to say that Kutcher is a dud—he isn’t. In recent years Kevin Costner has been experiencing a bit of a renaissance in critical acceptance, if not box office success, and with relaxed strokes his performance here reaffirms that he is more than a pretty face and has some acting chops to back it up. Costner’s quiet self-assurance as an actor could force Kutcher to wilt in the face of it but he manages to hold his own and puts forward a surprisingly competent performance only once hinted at before (in the first 20 minutes or so of The Butterfly Effect).
Those hoping to see a lot of cool open water rescues are likely to be disappointed. There are three in the whole movie (one at the beginning, two at the end) and it is in these scenes that director Andrew Davis lets his history directing action movies like Under Siege and Collateral Damage hold sway with rescues that are just a little too dangerous and a little too hyped up. Now, it may be that they are completely realistic to the conditions faced by coast guard rescue swimmers all the time, but it feels like too much and that is the important thing when watching a movie.
© Disney.
Most of the movie takes place at A School where Randall instructs Fischer and an anonymous band of classmates—among whom is Dulé Hill of The West Wing for no apparent reason since he only had a single line at most. If you enjoy watching people push themselves to unbelievable limits of personal endurance, you’ll enjoy this movie. Swimming with bricks, experiencing hypothermia, practicing underwater wrestling. It’s all there and is a perfect recruiting film for the 2,000 people nationwide likely capable of filling the job. This definitely is not an exposé of the seedy underside of military life and while the real world is allowed in long enough to tout the services performance after Hurricane Katrina no mention is made that the U.S. Coast Guard is also serving duty in the waterways of Iraq.
There is nothing in the movie that is surprising, even with an ending that will make many unhappy. Earlier this year, though, Annapolis reminded us just how bad military training movies can be. If you’re looking for an evening out at a movie that won’t challenge you, and that will stay squarely within its own and your comfort zone, you could do a lot worse than checking out The Guardian.
For parents, the PG-13 rating mostly results from the rescue scenes, which are intense. There is some language and one sexual scene with nothing much actually shown. It is an overly long movie, though, coming in at 136 minutes. There is a lot going on, but younger children may find it difficult to remain attentive for that long.
The Guardian is a Touchstone Pictures release.
Wide theatrical release September 29.
Directed by Andrew Davis.
Screenplay by Ron L. Brinkerhoff
Starring: Kevin Costner, Ashton Kutcher, Melissa Sagemiller, Sela Ward,
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action/peril, brief strong language and some sensuality.
Running time: 136 minutes
Alex’s Rating: 6 (out of 10).
If “relentlessly mediocre” was the phrase to describe The Guardian, then “relentlessly dull” is the way to describe Renaissance.
Renaissance is a French motion-capture animated film noir that has been making the festival circuit before finally being picked up by Miramax for limited theatrical release. In terms of visuals, the closest equivalent familiar to most people will be Sin City, but whereas Sin City made creative use of colors and grays, Renaissance is aggressively black and white. There is hardly an intrusion of grey tones and at one point near the end when color makes an appearance it was almost blinding.
Visually the film is very interesting. Almost interesting enough that it would be reason alone to seek it out if this hits a theater near you. But realisticly it only carries full attention for about 30 minutes and requires an interesting story to take the audience the rest of the way.
The setting is Paris in 2054, when a biotechnology company called Avalon seems to have become a major societal force. Daniel Craig (the new James Bond guy) provides the voice of police detective Karas, a typical noir figure who begins his descent when put on the case of a kidnapped Avalon researcher by the name of Ilona, who seems to have been mixed in somehow with a criminal element. Ilona’s sister Bislane (Catherine McCormack) is the femme fatale who seems to know more than she is admitting to.
© Miramax.
Things eventually turn to a mysterious eugenics program that ended in 2006, and it is unclear who is seeking what end. There may have been enough story here to keep things energized for an hour-long television drama. At about 90 minutes it just feels interminable, the very stereotype of French art-film pacing. Leaving the theater, my companion commented that two hours was simply too long. It was my sad duty to inform him it had only been 90 minutes.
Generally, I give boring films bonus points for remembering that film is a visual medium and attempting something visually interesting. I can’t do it in this case; there is just no way to recommend a movie that had me stifling yawns for so long, or rather, for seemingly so long.
© Miramax.
Unfortunately, they chose to redub the movie with an English language cast. With the stop-motion technology used to capture the French actors, there is enough fidelity in lip movement that the dubbing was obvious in several places. Plus, having to read the movie might have provided some extra distraction.
Renaissance is a Miramax Pictures release.
Very limited theatrical release September 29.
Directed by Christian Volckman.
Screenplay by Jean-Bernard Pouy and Patrick Rayanl.
Starring: Daniel Craig, Catherine McCormack, Jonathan Pryce, Ian Holm, Romola Garai.
Rated R for some violent images, sexuality, nudity and language.
Running time: 105 minutes (but at least 15 are opening and closing credits)
Alex’s Rating: 3 (out of 10).
