When will Hollywood come up with a new story? I mean, really new? Well, it's not with this movie. This is a remake of every "older experienced mentor going through a struggle teamed with a young hot shot who needs to be straightened out but they bond and become best friends, yada, yada, yada" movie ever made.
Kevin Costner plays a swimmer for the Coast Guard in this movie who should be retired but can't seem to give the life up until an accident happens. Then he takes a job as an instructor for the Coast Guard academy. He has his own rules on how to train these new, would-be swimmers. Ashton Kutcher is the hot shot swimmer ,who was recruited by every ivy league school on the planet, but decided he wanted to save lives instead. Costner runs the trainees through "real life" exercises to show them what saving lives in horrible conditions may be like. And he speaks of how one chooses, who lives and who dies on missions. Kutcher learns by trial and error what makes a good swimmer and what doesn't. And he and Costner start bonding as mentor to student and as friend to friend.
This movie reminded me of Annapolis (a carbon copy of An Officer and a Gentleman) but it's about swimmers and not soldiers. And it's reminscent of Top Gun a little bit with the struggles and lives of these poor devoted men to their jobs and not their personal relationships without the fun sound bites "I feel the need for speed" and the serenading of Kelly McGillis and other elements that made Top Gun a fun movie back in the day.
The action scenes were okay but not enough to see the movie on the big screen and pay for it. It's a rental, like G.I. Jane and other movies about the military. It's nice to see Ashton play a serious role but I'd rather see him in something a little bit crazy and out there as a departure from his partier, pretty boy, punk'd, older-woman-loving self. Not sure Hamlet would be it, but playing a total loser or someone dispictable that you wouldn't like and bring another side of himself to - his intellilect or a super emotional side or a deranged side.
Kosner wasn't great in this movie either. I loved him in No Way Out, Dances with Wolves, Tin Cup and Bull Durham. But I guess with all the replay scripts out there, he was bound to be in a movie like this. Don't do it again Kevin!
It wasn't great, it wasn't super poor, it was just kinda there like a big black hole you get sucked into despite your efforts to get free. It wasn't really entertaining but not really boring either. You knew how it was going to end but you still wanted to see the ending. Guess that's probably human nature and not a compelling script in this case.
So I'm just kind of up in the air about the movie in general. There wasn't enough depth to the characters to make you care and there wasn't enough drama or action to engage your other emotions. But if you want a real time passer that you only have to yawn at once or twice (which was sign from the Queen of England back in the day of how short your play would run) I guess this is a watchable movie.
Worth the money: $$
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