Released: 09/30/06

Viewed: 12:30 pm 10/01/06

Starring: Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Costner, Sela Ward, John Heard, Neal McDonough

Directed by: Andrew Davis

Touchstone pictures Official Site of the Movie

For those of you eagerly awaiting the 10 on the 10th featuring Ghostbusters, I apologize for the hold up. It’s all pretty much in place but I want to spend some time going over the review, maybe watch a couple of parts of the movie again. Why not, it’s freakin’ Ghostbusters. Should be up tomorrow evening but in the meanwhile here’s a little something to keep you entertained. The Guardian.

Are you ready for Ashton Kutcher the action star!? Well you weren’t ready for him in a dramatic thriller, and The Butterfly Effect turned out ok. Why shouldn’t he be an action hero? He does sit ups. He brings in the target audience. He’s a moneymaking sensation. What you should really be ready for with The Guardian is Kevin Costner without a cowboy hat or a baseball bat. It almost would have been more natural if he was emerging from within the rescue helicopter riding a horse. Oh, you’ll buy Ashton as an action star but you can’t picture a horse jumping out of a helicopter into the ocean. This is Hollywood. They can make it happen.

The Guardian is one of the worst titles for any movie this year. It’s just so generic and the type of title that’s more suited to a dumb nothing action movie. This movie is actually really well done for the most part, and deserving of better representation. At least if they had called it “Coast Guardian� I would have gotten a laugh out of it. (Say it out loud, it’s hysterical) What’s worse is how they explain the title in the final moments of the film. A call back to the opening shot that will make you wish the movie had sunken 10 minutes earlier.

I’m actually a pretty big fan of both Kutcher and Costner. I think each has a stereotype in Hollywood that they’re trying to escape and that a movie like this offers them exactly that opportunity. With its larger than life action scenes and intense training sequences you’ll be looking at both actors like you never have before.

As much as I like the pair it was the big action and military school storyline that had me excited about this one. I’m a sucker for the big emotional struggle and the water rescue specific montages set to the latest rock and roll mega hit. Plus, how often do you get to see a helicopter crash into the ocean? Not nearly enough.

There are four major action sequences that bookend the movie. A little far spread out, and one of them is a snoozer, but the other three deliver on what you’re hoping for. Big waves, stranded sailors and tons of… swimming. Ok, it doesn’t sound exciting but it looks incredible. Normally a good action sequence is helped if you have something invested with the characters. I’m not sure that’s necessary here, but they do a ridiculously thorough job of introducing every person that comes on screen. A debatable mistake as the movie stretches into its second hour, but the training of the group is so much fun that you won’t notice the time flying by.

Once they graduate from training you’ll notice the time come to an unexpected halt. It’s just one of the perfect moments for the movie to come to an end, but they had too much to clean up and the movie stumbles on. When you cover every cliché in the book, (which is fine there’s nothing wrong with that), you have to resolve them with some sort of urgency. If you don’t then the movie will end up resolving for 30 minutes, and that’s just too long. Costner and Kutcher are able to make a few of their half a dozen connections effective, but right around the time Costner was explaining the reason he always pops a piece of gum into his mouth before diving, I lost interest completely. People chew gum all the time. Who cares why?

I like everything that was presented in The Guardian, but just because you have a lot of good material doesn’t mean you have to use it all. This coming from the guy that wrote 8 pages on Lady in the Water. I’m not one to talk for someone in need of proper editing, but I’m also not getting paid millions of dollars to write this review. The Guardian is a lot of fun, entertaining and exciting, it has more good than bad. But sometimes if you have too much good… it can start to turn on you.

Rating: 6 out of 10

I like Ashton as our hero and Costner deserves a hit like this, but The Guardian just wages on far too long. With all it’s good qualities I wish I could give it endless praise but if it had ended 20 minutes early perhaps I would have had more time to do that.

DVD Worthy?:

Not for me. While I enjoyed certain scenes and the build up of the characters, the ending is dragged out to the point where I just get frustrated with the whole thing. If you love military drama or the dreamboats involved, you could have worse movies in your DVD collection, but you’ll rarely watch it. Whose got that kind of time?

Recommendation:

The Guardian has two very distinct sides to it and there are two movies it borrows heavily from to bring those sides to life. The first is An Officer and a Gentlemen, possibly the best military school movie of all time that all but invented how to do the “drill instructor-trouble student� dynamic and get yourself an Oscar in the process. The second is the Perfect Strom, a movie The Guardian borrowed less from directly, but Storm pioneered sea storm filmmaking in modern cinema and pretty much set the template for tension, mood and visuals when it comes to creating a great ocean disaster. Like The Guardian, Storm could stand for a trimming, but the payoff at the end is worth the wait.

Outside the Theater:

I hope you guys have enjoyed the special Veronica Mars comics the past couple of weeks. I realize it’s a gig departure from what you’re used to but I really dif the show and wanted to get people involved. Thanks so much to everyone that’s been e-mailing and posting over on the boards about how much they’ve enjoyed the strips. It really means a lot.

My brother Mitch and I are up to our old troubles with album covers. Check out the latest stuff over at Mitch’s Live Journal. I’m actually really proud of how this set came out. I think it’s easily our strongest collaboration and hope the Wisconsin punk community loves it.

Just a friendly reminder to pick up your set of Joe Loves Crappy Movies Buttons! Have a closer look at the set. Only 4 dollars for the 4 buttons. Get them while they’re hot.

I’m pretty pleased with sales so far but find it odd that people will soon be wearing little pictures of me on their jackets. When you get your button set, take some pictures. It’ll make the experience so much weirder. See you tomorrow!