Â鶹ԼÅÄ

Sadly, The Guardian has nothing to do with the inner workings of Britain's favourite liberal newspaper. Instead, it's the tale of a grizzled Coast Guard rescue swimmer (played with sufficient grizzle by Kevin Costner) and his relationship with a hotheaded young recruit (played, if that's not too generous a term by Ashton Kutcher). In other words, The Guardian is Top Gun in a swimming pool, and thoroughly mediocre with it.

You might think that, after Waterworld, Kevin Costner would steer clear of ocean movies, but here he is again, bobbing around on the tempestuous CGI seas like a grumpy fishing float. Costner can be highly entertaining given the right script, but The Guardian casts him as the familiar world-weary superhero type we've seen so many times before; a taciturn lifesaver at odds with his own brilliance. Still, at least he can fill a cinema screen. Kutcher shares a few of his scenes with a CPR training mannequin. And it's hard to tell which is which.

"DIALOGUE IS DELICIOUSLY CLUNKY"

Much of the film is set at A-School, a training camp for rescue swimmers where the recruits do press ups and yell "Hoo-RAH!" every five minutes for no discernable reason. Rescue swimmers, in case you were wondering, are the guys and gals who jump out of helicopters to save folks from drowning. A tough job, and deserving of better publicity than this.

The Guardian is a pleasant enough distraction, although like so much of Costner's work it is far too long. Director Andrew Davis throws in a couple of scary rescues, and the dialogue is deliciously clunky. Costner's estranged wife, for instance, walks out of his life with the deathless line, "It's time for me to rescue myself". Yeah, you go girl.