Rated PG-13 
Several years ago (I don’t remember how many), Hollywood decided to honor the women of its industry not by writing better parts for them, or by letting them write and direct the big movies, or even by opening up more top jobs at film studios.

No, Hollywood decided instead to go all out and devote an entire Oscar broadcast to women. I believe the extravaganza was called “Women in Film,” but the show was embarrassing, and about as memorable as any of the women in the new Kevin Costner-Ashton Kutcher collaboration, “The Guardian.”

In big budget heroics such as this, the key—at least it used to be—was how the heroes were perceived not just by the other men in their (outfit, firehouse, police station, whatever), but also how they were looked upon by the women in their lives. Throughout the history of this genre, it was essential that the leading man not only win the day, but also get the girl—and we usually knew the girl was probably the more satisfying of the two.

That’s because the girls in question were Jean Harlow or Myrna Loy or Faye Dunaway, with their intelligent sense of cool and sophistication. The women in the audience wanted to be them, and the men in the audience desired them. But with the dawn of “First Blood” in the early 1980s, the role of women in buddy-buddy films began to be minimized and was soon largely forgotten.

In “The Guardian,” Costner plays Ben Randall, leader of  an elite crew of Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers who save people from the most horrific and life-threatening circumstances—a worthy subject for a motion picture. We first meet his wife as she’s moving out. Helen Randall is played by a radiant and apparently naturally beautiful Sela Ward.

Even slightly savvy audiences today will know what happens next, because of the way the situation has been set up. Ward will disappear from the movie. The audience will only know her through her worth to the hero, because he will say, as Costner does, “I won’t let her get away.” She will return to visit her man in the hospital after he is hurt (she does), and then welcome him back into her arms because she, too, understands the heavy burden of his life (she does).

The story structure paradigm is as old as celluloid, but a female actor was once allowed to flesh this person out. Here, Ward is nothing more than a decoration, a mechanism, and the movie—and others like it—is diminished because of this. If the male camaraderie is what gives these movies energy, it has always been the deeper relationship between two people who care for each other in more than a physical way that gives them resonance. That’s what makes us care about a character and gives a film the emotional grandeur we once expected.

Such was the allure of Tracy-Loy, or Gable-Harlow or Cooper-Bergman. That’s why audiences remember their films, and their partnerships, decades after first seeing them. After all, why would you not develop a character or two to which half the potential ticket buyers in the world can relate?

But today, the emotional life of a movie couple all too often is seen through the eyes of the male half only. Ben Randall says to his wife, “I’m sorry that saving lives isn’t on our social calendar.” This puts Ward’s character in a bad light, but the filmmakers don’t care about that. All that matters is Ben’s commitment to his life on the sea. But the audience knew that going in, and so, for a film like this to be truly memorable, we need something more.

Most of these kinds of movies don’t set a very high threshold for entertaining audiences. Clichés abound, and it doesn’t seem to matter. They’re still good box office. All you have to do is throw in a few beautiful people, put them through several tests (of loss, love and life, whatever), chuck them smack-dab in the middle of a mighty (storm, fire, mountain range, battle, whatever), have almost all of the stars suffer while one or two of them dies, save the people, have a big hug and cue the music. But they’re also increasingly forgettable.

“The Guardian”—directed by Andrew Davis, who long ago made a pretty good movie called “The Fugitive”—follows the recipe but manages to screw down the tension by focusing almost the entire movie on training exercises. That was a mistake. Half the scenes of the men in the tank full of ice or swimming in the pool should have been devoted to Sela Ward.

This would have meant, by the time the big life-threatening rescue rolls around (and it does), we might have actually cheered for our heroes. And we would have empathized more deeply with the commitment and fear felt by those they leave behind.