(139 mins, 12A)
Directed by Andrew Davis; starring Kevin Costner, Ashton Kutcher, Melissa Sagemiller, Clancy Brown

There is a perversion, much practised in Hollywood movies, that might be called sado-paternalism, whereby a surrogate father treats a gifted but difficult pupil with derision and constant punishment. The aim is to bring out the best in the victim and to make him into a he-man (as in the Sands of Iwo Jima and An Officer and a Gentleman) or (in the case of GI Jane) a he-woman. The Guardian is a typical example and stars Kevin Costner as a veteran US Coast Guard deep-sea rescue swimmer. (There are, we are told, only a couple of hundred members of this elite group.) He's assigned to teach at the Coast Guard rescue school after a particularly hairy mission off the coast of Alaska and gives the overconfident, boastful young Ashton Kutcher a very difficult time.

The cliches, including the fact that Costner and Kutcher both suffer from survivor guilt, fall into place to make up a very familiar picture. Given the obtuse order, 'Make waves!', the special effects people go about their business as thoroughly and effectively as Prospero does in the opening scene of The Tempest.