So important to this old guard. Saw it on my future wife and I's first date during its summer premiere in bicentennial '76. Man did it talk to me. Afterward, I bought the "Book Made From the Movie" and read it more than once. During the following summer of '77 I saw it again while stationed with the 3rd Marine Division in Okinawa, Japan. Remember taking a small cassette recorder into the theater and recording John Williams "Time and Tide" and listening to it days after in my BOQ. Why? Because being a life guard is special. The life saving has deep down importance. To this day I mark the lives I saved as among the top 2 or 3 things I'm proudest of. And the precious fleeting beauty of cooling sand in the early evening when the beach has emptied out and it's just you and the primal force of the water. All of that is captured tenderly and just right in this wonderful picture. And Sam Elliot's Rick knows that saving lives and standing sentry by the shore is profoundly more important than mundane pursuits of prestige and money. So he has the presence of mind to take a pass on the rat race and instead do what his soul tells him to do.
