The Guardian
Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Touchstone
| List Price: |
$19.99 |
| Amazon Price: |
$14.99 |
| Lowest New Price: |
$7.00 |
| Lowest Used Price: |
$4.39 |
| Total New: |
47 |
| Total Used: |
56 |
DVD Details:
- Starring: Kevin Costner, Ashton Kutcher, Sela Ward, Melissa Sagemiller, Clancy Brown
- Director: Andrew Davis
- Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
- Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
- Studio: Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Touchstone
- Theatrical Release Date: Sep 29, 2006
- DVD Release Date: Jan 23, 2007
- Run Time: 139 minutes
- ASIN: B000KF0GWW
- UPC: 786936705119
- Sales Rank: 1872
Amazon Customer Reviews:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
    watch for the rescue and training scenes, 2008-11-28
The Guardian wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible either. It was pretty much a standard military movie, on the order of, say, Top Gun, or a dozen others. Every bit of plot was predictable, from the best friend dying at the beginning, to the cocky kid the instructor is extra tough on because he reminds him of himself, to the romance, right down to the ending.
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br /Kevin Costner plays a Coast Guard rescue swimmer whose wife left him, and his best friend died in a rescue gone bad, and when he gets out of the hospital, he's sent to the school to train rescue swimmers. Ashton Kutcher is the cocky kid.
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br /The beginning, with the wife leaving, sparked one of my rants--it was never explained, beyond a general "he was married to his job", and since they'd obviously been together a long time, there really needed to be a precipitating factor. I could believe there had been one, but not being privy to it, I couldn't feel sympathy for either of them. It reminded me of the Tom Clancy books with the inexplicable wives. Because women, you know, don't really have reasons for the stuff they do. (told you I ranted--be grateful I already got it mostly out of my system)
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br /The other part that really bugged me was the romance Ashton Kutcher's character had with a local school teacher. There was zero chemistry between the characters. In short, I didn't believe either relationship thread, and they seemed tacked on to fill in a checklist. It was a long movie--136 minutes--so I wouldn't have missed it if they'd just cut those parts out entirely.
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br /The rescue scenes and the training scenes, and the Coast Guard itself, were the real stars of the movie. The Coast Guard is really underrepresented in movies, and it was nice to get a picture of them.
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br /Quibble: why, why, why, does every single movie with a disaster at sea have the scene with characters in a room slowly filling with water, and the water always gets almost to the ceiling before they're rescued? It always happens. And in The Guardian, it went on far too long. There's a point in an action scene where tension turns to boredom. This scene passed that point.
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br /As for the acting, I like Kevin Costner, generally, and he was fine in this movie. I've no complaints. Ashton Kutcher was fine in the action/adventure scenes, but in the romance scenes, he had the same emotional depth as in the classroom scenes. It was like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, but without the charm.
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br /Secondary characters: I did enjoy the bartender (played by Bonnie Bramlett)--she wasn't a stock character, and had a lot of the funny /or insightful lines in the film. I also liked the other instructor (played by Neal McDonough), mostly because he surprised me. I expected the usual rival, but instead, he behaved the way I'd expect the character to in real life.
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br /Bottom line: if you like this kind of movie, you'll enjoy The Guardian. Just don't expect anything new.
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