A standard action film this is not.  The Guardian is much more.    View Movie Trailer through IMDb.com   

The Guardian, directed by Andrew Davis, is certainly not your classic action film. It is full of intense emotions and astonishing themes that will leave you shaking. The film tells the story of a man named Ben Randall (Kevin Costner), an award winning Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer, who becomes so furiously driven by the ambition to save the lives his job requires him to save that he begins to make mistakes that hurt and even jeopardize people in his own life. Then he meets his future protege, a young recruit named Fischer (Ashton Kutcher), and they both challenge each other.

One mistake of Randall’s leads to a terrible accident. Suffocated by the trauma of the experience, Randall is forced to give up going on rescues and is sent to teach at the United States Coast Guard "A" School. In "A" School, Randall becomes mentor to Rescue Swimmer recruit, Jake Fischer (Ashton Kutcher) who also is driven to save lives for reasons that parallel Randall’s. But Fischer, who is arrogant about his surpassing physical capabilities, must learn from Randall that the ability to save lives does not come from one’s ability to be physically the best; it comes from one’s ability to endure and not give up.

What The Guardian teaches about the twin traits of humility and arrogance proves by far one of the most riveting aspects of the film. Throughout, viewers come face to face with, see and understand, the heroism and absolute humility that are required whenever a US Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer saves a life. For one sole individule to dive into a black ocean swelling with 7-foot waves from the open cargo-bay of a circling helicopter, just to rescue one single human being – to offer one’s very breath and life in the face of the possiblity of death, all to attempt a perhaps futile rescue of one human life – is one of the ultimate and truest examples of humility that we can look to today. Our hero, US Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer, Randall, learns from his costly mistake that being driven by furious resolve and by the strength and one's own ability to be first and best to save every endangered life is not the result of humility but of arrogance. And arrogance, by it's nature, doesn't lead to life.  It eventually leads to death, as Randall found out.  Recruit Rescue Swimmer, Fischer, Randall's protege, has to learn this truth, too, through an equally fateful mistake of his own.

Part of what leaves the audience trembling--bringing out intense emotion--in The Guardian is that the rescue scenes all seem wholly real. There is a documentary feel, thanks to the work of cinematographer Stephen St John, which overpowers the general well-crated film-fiction tone.  Director Andrew Davis and Kostner's and Kucher's bravery are largely and equally responsible for the real-life documentary feel. Davis, in an interview accessible at  www.darkhorizons.com, revealed to Paul Fishcer, who conducted the interview, that the whole cast was put through a Boot Camp conducted by real US Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers. By the end of filming, they were all in such Coast Guard-worthy shape that they could have actually become US Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers. These actors also passed many cold nights submerged in tons of water, getting their brains beat about by the 7-foot waves produced by gigantic wind machines.  Even in this frigid night-work they actually did their own stunts in the rescue scenes. It is, of course, the actors's brilliant abilities that captured, with such breath-taking realism, the emotions and profound humility which the screenplay (new comer Ron L. Brinkerhoff) called for, but it is also Davis's outstanding directing and the significant opportunity to experience at first-hand the life of US Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers and to see the true humility they embrace every time a rescue sends them hurtling into the roaring watery abyss.

I give The Guardian a rating of 5 Stars because of the totality of thematic message, realism, acting and directing.  All the parts together make The Guardian a Must See Movie.