“The Guardian”: mediocre, but inoffensive

As “The Guardian” starts up, Ben Randall (Kevin Costner) is a rescue swimmer for the U.S. Coast Guard whose life is making that awkward transition from leaving middle-age to becoming the first act of a film. Within five minutes, he has saved some people, suffered a messy divorce because he cares too much about saving people, and finally lost all of his fellow people-savers during a catastrophic people-saving disaster. (I apologize to the U.S. Coast Guard if this description sounds sarcastically reductive, but believe me, the film itself does your profession one worse.) Accepting a teaching job at people-saving school, Ben immediately finds himself at odds with young buck Jake Fischer (Ashton Kutcher), a swim team champ who looks like he’s got something to prove.

And from there you could probably connect the dots for yourself: as a former man in the field, Randall brings highly unorthodox methods to the school; Fischer reveals his eagerness for a genuine concern for humanity; the two form an unlikely bond and teach each other all about life all over again; and there is even a scenario where one or both threaten to quit their current posts because of the ghosts of past tragedies. In that sense, I imagine that “The Guardian” does not feature a scene of badges being slammed onto superiors’ desks only because Coast Guards lack slammable badges. Its own saving grace is its “action” sequences; a series of humans adrift in rollicking waves, helpless in the utter lack of dry land, and not treated with an “extreme” aesthetic but reacting with genuine levity to their situations.

From there, then, we must take a look at the few unique aspects of this film:namely, the leads. I admit with some surprise that “Open Season”—the other Ashton Kutcher film to open alongside “The Guardian”—raised my level of respect for the young actor. As that film is already a strange exploration of the bestial side of man and nature, Kutcher’s disturbing mule deer/idiot man-child certainly helped make the animated film one of the finest efforts of 2006. (Kutcher’s character Elliot makes an unserious admission that he “killed a man”; the subsequent awkward pause is probably the most hilarious yet horrifying moment of the year.) Maybe voice-work is the way to go, as the man in live action comes across as a perpetual dimbulb, cursed with the inherently emotionless face bestowed upon him. Not necessarily bad, Kutcher is just flat and toneless in “The Guardian,” keeping his within safe boundaries any level of volume or emotion. Consider keeping it limited to animation, Ashton; it worked for Mark Hamill.

Meanwhile, I have been handed a rather harsh reality check concerning Kevin Costner, once an actor I looked forward to. I guess it’s because I know him more for his earlier efforts, and Costner feels like one of those actors that I grew up with—even though I don’t think I really did. Certainly he has perfected the art of the milquetoast good guy, and his dogged insistence towards justice is made doubly interesting in the ironic backdrops of “The Untouchables” and “JFK.” Given to the straightforwardness of “The Guardian,” however, I realize how limited he really is. He’s certainly got Josh Lucas beat on the whole “being Kevin Costner” front, but after seeing this, “Rumor Has It,” and yes, even the earlier work—I’m convinced he’s only beaten out the pale imitation of a generally pale actor.

To some degree, however, you wonder if these guys don’t deserve to star in a film with each other, if “The Guardian” isn’t exactly the breed of film that these actors should gravitate towards. I’ve leveled my fair share of vitriol against aggressively formulaic films in the past before (see: “Nacho Libre”), but through all the generalized complaints I have come to realize that it takes a lot more than a lack of nutritional value to truly offend me. In the very fact that its pieces fit so well together, “The Guardian” is watchable, a strange form of agreeable blandness; the kind of stuff that’s tailor-made to Kutcher’s blank face and Costner’s general disinterest. It also has the balls to offer three entire endings before it actually ends, but once the credits roll with a photographic, pseudo-patriotic montage of the history of the Coast Guard (see it again soon in Clint Eastwood’s similarly bland, disconnected “Flags of Our Fathers”), you’ll have forgotten everything about it. But when all is said and done, it is not incompetent or blindly hateful, and that already places it head and shoulders above “Employee of the Month.”