By Dain Maher Posted March 17, 2014
“The Guardian” is a very powerful, inspiring movie about a little-known branch of the Coast Guard known as rescue swimmers. The movie details the lives of an experienced rescue swimmer named Ben Randall played by Kevin Costner and a high school swimmer turned Coast Guard cadet named Jake Fischer played by Ashton Kutcher. The movie describes the hard work and intensity required to make it to Coast Guard A-school and then graduate from it. It’s also about courage, survival, and sacrifice.
Because of an accident during a mission off the coast of Kodiak, Alaska, Senior Chief Ben Randall loses his crew and is told by his superior that he needs to take some time off. He is put in charge of teaching a class of new cadets at the Coast Guard training school. His unconventional methods of teaching the cadets force many to drop but the ones who stay are some of the best rescue swimmers to come out of the program.
Jake Fischer, Randall’s prodigy, is assigned to Kodiak where Randall had been assigned for so many years. When Randall retires abruptly after becoming incapacitated during a rescue mission, Fischer becomes the man on the base. When Fischer becomes trapped on a rescue mission and no one is available to help Fischer, Randall is called out of retirement to save Fischer and the crew. When the line carrying them both begins to break, Randall lets go of Fischer to save him because he knows Fischer won’t let go. Randall then becomes a legend among sailors as somebody who saves them from death by pushing them toward the surface.
