Too well made to be a craptacular classic, but too full of clichés to be a fresh take on a tried and true genre. It has a slightly different setting – coast guard rescue teams – but the basic situations are too familiar: tortured instructor with a past, cocky young kid with a past, training montages, token black (Dulee Hill from West Wing), romance with a pretty girl who puts down the cocky kid at first, throaty supporting female actor, shots of spunks in uniform, a brawl in a bar, you just know the finale would have been screen tested within an inch of its life (should he live or die?).
But it's done in this restrained style which kind of kills the fun. Ashton Kutcher decides not to overdo cocky... but then he has nowhere else to go (he must be a smart funny guy in real life, Kutcher, but it doesn’t come across here).
Also there’s not enough humour, and the support cast lacks charisma (if this was a Bruckheimer film you’d have Steve Buscemi and William Fichtner and what not). There is some impressive action sequences and a lovely bit of writing from a support character (a bar maid) about getting old.
No comments:
Post a Comment