I was very surprised going into The Guardian that I would actually be writing good things about it. But then again, the same day I saw this movie, another movie that I was anticipating had deeply disappointed me, which only makes this movie's success even more interesting. It seems like since Top Gun, we've been given a movie about every branch of military service, most of which are not a credit to the men and women who serve them. For the Guardian, this happens to be a good movie, even though it tries to be at every turn.

The movie puts us with the U.S. Coast Guard Dive Team who go out to rescue people in the open waters along the coasts. We first meet Ben Randall (Kevin Costner), one of the most elite swimmers (and one of the oldest) on the job. During a rather nasty storm while he was trying to save a boatload of fishemen, his helicopter goes down, stranding him the North Baltic for five hours with a wounded friend who dies. Of course this means that he would have to be landbound for a while (and just to make sure we get it that this is traumatizing, he starts taking pills). So what will he do? He can train the new generation of divers (cue Up Where We Belong). From here until the last twenty minutes, it's all a repeat of An Officer and a Gentleman. Instead of Richard Gere, we have Ashton Kucher playing Jake, who has a huge chunk of ice on his shoulder (and yet he's still able to stay afloat in the water). We kind of get to know some other recuits, but it's Jake and Ben the movie is interested. What starts off as an adversarial relationship slowly becomes a mentorship which becomes a friendship. I don't think I'm spoiling anything to say that we get to see what young Jake learns from school, which are the scenes that pay off for the rest of the movie.