Any film involving Kevin Costner and a lot of water makes critics apprehensive. In The Guardian he plays a veteran coastguard struggling to whip a young hotshot (Ashton Kutcher) into shape. It wasn't as bad as first feared, but even so, "clunky dialogue" and endless clichés rendered it as soggy as the stunt double's underpants. It didn't show much buoyancy at the box office either.
All At Sea
In an introduction to the alternative ending, director Andrew Davis explains that studio execs were worried about finishing the movie on a scene that was "too serious, or too depressing". That's why he shot this happy-clappy-splashy version, but insists that, "Kevin didn't want it, I didn't want it and the writers didn't want it..." In the end, of course, the suits relented.
Clichés abound in four more deleted scenes, which find Jake (Kutcher) chatting up schoolteacher Emily (Melissa Sagemiller) in a launderette, visiting her in class after a fight and making nice with the kids (to show that he's a really sensitive guy), and Randall (Costner) clashing with Skinner (Neal McDonagh) over their disparate teaching philosophies, ie good cop, bad cop - you know the drill.
A five-minute tribute to the US coastguards provides a tiny glimpse at the real-life dilemmas faced by these people.
The Movie Tanks
A ten-minute behind-the-scenes featurette skips briefly over the biggest technical challenges of the production. Kutcher reveals that he spent eight months in training, which probably means splashing around in Demi Moore's pool every day. However, at least a month of that time was spent in boot camp and he assures us, "I've never been yelled at so much by someone" (not even after that accident in Demi's pool). When it came to performing those wild sea rescues on camera, a giant wave pool had to be built in New Orleans. Unfortunately, Hurricane Katrina blew it all to pieces and the set had to be re-erected in nearby Shreveport. Although we see time-lapse video of this process, there is very little footage of the stunts actually being performed.
Aside from that, there's the usual waffle from cast and crew regarding their director's "strong visual sense" while the man himself describes Costner as "very hands-on". Of course, that's just a polite way of calling an actor 'interfering' and being his usual difficult self, Costner declines to comment. All things considered, this DVD is the very definition of watered down entertainment.
EXTRA FEATURES
The Guardian DVD is released on Monday 19th February 2007.
