HLJ's Movie Blog

The Guardian

The light sweeps across the water's surface, searching. It finds the deck of a ship, or maybe a person floating in the water. A rescue swimmer jumps in and helps those that can be helped. What happens to the those that can't be saved? As it was stated in the Gaurdian, "The sea takes the rest."

Movies are like water rescues. The frame that defines the picture is the light. It shows us what needs to be seen, the characters, the action. The director is the one who choses what we see. What goes unseen is left to the darkness.

I doubt the director of The Guardian was trying to convey this in his movie. I think his main goal was to wring every tear he could from the audience. He got a lot out of me. This movie pits youth against experience. The prize is who lives at the end of the story. Does the older and wiser man prevail, or does youth endure? The story is formulaic to a fault. The rookie comes in and gets his chops busted by the older instructor. He somehow earns the older mans respect which enables him to somehow exceed the older one. Classic archetypes. It worked for most of the movie, but the end was disappointing. The end was such that it made me rethink the whole movie, and essentially think it was junk. I hate when you invest yourself in a character, only to have that character die a stupid meaningless death. If you identify with that character, what does that mean for you?

What did make the movie interesting - beyond my opening comments - is that real people do this job. There are really men and women who jump into the raging waters and save people. I thought this was fascinating. Watch the waves crash over the deck of a ship and imagine yourself there, waiting for someone to save you. I love the ocean and the waves, but I will hopefully never lose respect for the power that it contains.

Unfortunately, the action scenes were not as intense as other movies of this type. There were a lot of wider shots and very few, if any point of view shots. Both of these would have helped put you into the action more. But perhaps, keeping us in a somewhat objective point of view on the situation may have helped to let us quietly observe instead of fretting in our seats.