Day 40 -- Guarding Tess

Released: March 11th, 1994

Starring: Nicholas Cage, Shirley MacLaine

Writer/Director: Hugh Wilson and Peter Torokvei/Hugh Wilson

Description: A former First Lady of the US wants a particular Secret Service agent to head her bodyguard detail, even though he can't stand her.

[Review may contain spoilers. Please watch movie before reading, unless you don't care. Most of these films have already been released for a while, so they should be readily available.]
 

***

First off, thanks to everyone who voted in our first poll. There will be more in the future, so stay tuned.

Some movies are only remembered because certain actors star in them. There's not really much that stands out story-wise, or even performance-wise, but they still stick in the mind of audiences even years after their release. It's usually quite the achievement to make a movie, no matter what the quality, and have it find an audience. Albeit, a niche audience, but no matter what you're assured it will not be forgotten.

"Guarding Tess" at it's core is a comedy version of "Driving Miss Daisy", but it's enduring success is because of the work of Nick Cage. He plays ambitious Secret Service Agent Doug Chesnic, who despises the role of guarding former first lady Tess Carlisle, and dreams of a more glamorous assignment within the agency. But after his final day, his is notified that Mrs. Carlisle ask him to be kept on for another tour of duty. Doug refuses, but relents when the president asks him to do it as a personal favor.

From this point forward, the relationship between Doug and Tess dominates most of the movie, as Tess attempts to loosen him up, and he tries to stick to protocol. After a diner alone, the pair gain the trust of each other and begin to blossom into a mother-son relationship. This is where McLaine's old school acting shines through, as she doesn't attempt to show the change through anything dramatic, but rather, she keeps it subtle by using her mannerisms and tone of voice to convey her love for Doug.

The most important thing that many screenwriters should learn from this movie is that if you set a moral code and personality for a character, make them stand by it, unless something legitimate causes it to change. The device used in "Guarding Tess" is the final act when she gets kidnapped, which makes Doug change his thoughts on protocol because he has grown to care for Tess. So his shooting of the driver who turned on her, is much more justified because it was shown why he changed and why it was significant.

Outside of that solid piece of writing, the plot and story isn't all the special. The conflict between Doug and Tess is outstanding but the kidnapping was poorly thought out and executed. Unless I missed it, there was no indication as to why her driver would execute a plan to use her for ransom. A more believable storyline would have been her son doing it so that he could get the money for his retirement home project, whether that be through her life insurance or the ransom. But the driver was just an excuse to use the car lighter clue that made Doug seem competent in the CIA's mind.

"Guarding Tess" was truly a time when the actor's performances were much better than the material they were given. It was a rare movie where Cage allowed his character to slowly develop, and not gave him a unique quality, such as the Pokey voice in "Peggy Sue Got Married". The movie didn't affect me one way or the other, it's a fine move to watch, but it's not something I'd probably pay money to see. In the end, I cared more about the terrible drama in the final half-hour, then I did about how the story would turn out, and that is not what a filmmaker should be striving for in their movie.

Rating: 6/10 -- Average movie, with some good performances. Feels like a movie that could only be made in its time period. When you watch it you can tell it's from the early 90s, and is too slow for today's ADD movie going public.