I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Strong and Moving!

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Continuing my plan to watch every Kevin Costner movie in his filmography in order, I come to 2006's The Guardian Plot In A Paragraph: Jake Fischer (Ashton Kutcher) a high school swim champion, enrolls in the U.S. Coast Guard's "A" School, where legendary rescue swimmer Ben Randall (KC) teaches him some hard lessons as he believes he is there for the wrong reasons.There is absolutely nothing new here, we've seen everything before. Mainly in An Officer & A Gentleman, The Guardian is as cliché as it gets. But I for one find it an enjoyable movie.Almost every cliché is ticked along the way, (I think the only one they missed is Kutchers love interest not being KC's daughter) but that doesn't meant it isn't good. Both leads put in good performances and are well backed up by Neal McDonough, Clancy Brown, Brian Geraghty and John Heard.As for the characters, KC is grumpy, Kutcher is arrogant, Geraghty is suitably shy and nervous, but it's McDonough who I believe is what an instructor would be like in a place like this.Slated upon release, I can't recall reading one positive review, but I enjoyed it then, and I still do now, it's one both of my kids like too. It's one of the movies that if the kids walk in a room and I'm watching it, they will sit with me and watch the rest of it.

Ben Randall (Kevin Costner) is a veteran Coast Guard rescue swimmer. His wife Helen (Sela Ward) is leaving him. He loses his friend during a deadly accident in a rescue. After injuries and possible PTSD, he is forced to be an instructor at the Coast Guard "A" school. The new recruits include an arrogant champion swimmer Jake Fischer (Ashton Kutcher) who is more interested in the swimming records. He meets Emily Thomas (Melissa Sagemiller) at a wedding. Ben is unconvinced of Jake's commitment and then he uncovers his hidden past.This starts with a couple of thrilling rescues. It puts the movie in a compelling spot. Then it turns into a traditional 'An Officer and A Gentleman'. It's a little too on-the-nose especially with Jake's story. I would have preferred a more interesting Jake performance. It also goes on a little too long. This shouldn't be over two hours long. It needs a bit of tightening including the climax. I may even suggest dropping the love interest but this is still Hollywood. It's a movie that starts strong and stays compelling despite its oddly strict-formulaic story.

It was around 2005 onwards that films started to decline overall. We saw a great reduction in daring, but novel plots and Hollywood started churning out films with reused plots, predictable endings, moderate acting and "crosses the Ts" style of film making, producing an ultimately forgettable product. This spanned across action, comedy and drama films and since then, we're seldom treated to an interesting movie.The guardian is not an interesting movie. Amazingly, the film had a large budget though it was difficult to work out how this was consumed, given most of the film was shot in and around an indoor pool.The teacher is brilliant with a distinguished career, but battling his demons arising out of a tragic event (yawn) and a cocky new recruit with bad attitude and loads of talent (yawn) who ends of walking the straight and narrow to become a true hero everyone knows that he is (yawn).Costner and Kutcher were fairly well matched and acting was reasonable given the material, but the cardboard cutout nature of the plot was just such as a disappointment that it overshadowed any positives.Even if you saw it at the time it came out, I bet you couldn't remember what it was about these days.

This could definitely have been a better movie.It could have been a worse one too, but. Well.I am not trying to denounce what this movie attempted to do. I think it is brave to attempt to trace a frakked-up teenager's journey from a loud-mouthed, grieving kid whose sadness has turned to anger, into an excellent, brave and capable human being.I just happen to think that process is a lot more complicated than suddenly becoming great at something I happened to be great at anyway.I also think it's a lot easier to offer the sort of absolution, forgiveness and redemption this Teacher is offering to his Pupil when the pupil happens to excel at one of the things he is being taught.I think it's high time we as a society stop deeming sports skillz the kind of talent that makes somebody 'great' as a person, rather than simply as an athlete.Growing up as a man has got to come to mean more than succeeding at football or baseball--or, in this case, swimming. It has got to come to mean more than successfully throwing a ball or running faster than anybody else around. This movie only offers half the story.Yes, Ashton Kutchers' character does try to reach beyond the typical athlete persona by attempting to become a member of the Coast Guard.However, once there, he does nothing but screw up.Because he is "great" at swimming, however, he never once has to face the consequences. He simply sails along getting into barfights, snarling at his supposed teammates and mouthing off to his superiors.All in all, he clearly has some ambivalence about being a "hero." None of that matters because he is a great swimmer ergo he seems presumed by all to have every right to get into a 'few minor scraps' along the road to the sure success his superiors all predict for him.This cute, small-town white boy is thus taken under the wings of several older, good-ole-boy types and made into a man--or their version.Somehow, he is also surrounded by a team of other boys--and teachers--who look exactly like him. Oh, there is one black student and one black teacher just for the sake of paying lip service to diversity...but they have about six lines combined. The ONLY female rescue swimmer has got literally just about one line during the movie.The screenwriters pay no attention to the difficulties that any of these people would surely face in any military institution, nor to the complexity of the issues surrounding their entrance into it.Of course not.This is an easy movie, designed to provide easy answers to complex questions. It is designed to trace the 'hero's journey' of one white boy who really does not so much deserve the opportunities he is given.It is designed to give a second chance to a man who would not need it if he had not given in to his depression and hidden out for a year to begin with, then decided the solution to his internal agony was to "save" other people. This has never in the his- and her- stories of the world provided an effective solution to intense grief.Too bad we still have so many movies that suggest otherwise.