PORT ANGELES — With its spectacular rescues, romance and barroom camaraderie, “The Guardian” was a heck of a good time for 130 members of the Coast Guard, their spouses and children Friday afternoon.
And though it was glossy Hollywood entertainment, it was pronounced not corny by three flight mechanics who watched the special Coast Guard showing of the movie at Deer Park Cinemas.
“It was pretty realistic,” said Trevin Dabney, 34, a Coastie from Billings, Mont., now stationed at the Port Angeles Coast Guard Group/Air Station.
Flight mechanics Jeff Breidenbach of Indiana and Steve Sergeiko of Massachusetts, both 28, agreed.
They called the movie “pretty well done,” and a decent portrayal of Coast Guard heroes with their share of struggles.
“The Guardian” is the story of the Coast Guard’s elite rescue swimmers, starring Ashton Kutcher as cocky high school swim champion Jake Fischer and Kevin Costner as Ben Randall, a legend who has saved hundreds of people.
Both men have tragic pasts, and both grapple with resentment toward each other.
Fischer sees Randall as a has-been relegated to the classroom, while the older man sees his pupil as a jerk who hasn’t learned the importance of teamwork.
The script is snappy and the footage of Bering Sea rescues off Kodiak, Alaska, is staggering.
So are the scenes of rescue-swimmer training: young men and women pushing big bricks across the bottom of the pool, forbidden to rise and take breaths; the senior chief shoveling ice into a pool full of shivering students to teach them about hypothermia.
“The Guardian” is rated PG-13, and has the unfortunate tendency, however, to make light of barroom violence.
Depiction appreciated
Pilot Eric Vogelbacker, 38, joined the Coast Guard when he was 17, right after graduating from high school in Long Beach, Calif.
“I chose it because I admired its humanitarian mission,” he said.
Vogelbacker was later sent to Kodiak, Alaska, two months after he and his wife Lynne were married.
Alaska’s ferocious storms aren’t easy to capture on film, Vogelbacker said. “But they did a pretty good job,” in the movie.
He appreciated “The Guardian’s” emphasis on the Coast Guard motto, “So others may live.”
The picture portrays Guardsmen as self-sacrificing rescuers who are still haunted by memories of people they were unable to save.
The scenes of training were fairly realistic, but “not intense enough in some spots,” said Dan Whitson, a Coast Guard operational specialist in Port Angeles.
The movie “is good for the Coast Guard so people can see what we do,” added Kelly Larson, who was a rescue swimmer for 10 years before she became a pilot.
