Nimród Antal’s sleek direction is the only thing of interest
in Armored, a rote B-movie in which a
heist goes wrong courtesy of one robber’s nagging conscience. Having just lost
both his parents, which left him with a house the bank wants to repossess and a
delinquent kid brother social services wants to snatch, armored truck guard Ty
(Columbus Short) is convinced by his colleague and friend Mike (Matt Dillon) to
help steal $42 million from two trucks they – and their mates, including
Laurence Fishburne, Jean Reno, Amaury Nolasco and Skeet Ulrich – will be
transporting. Ty joins the plot under an agreement with Mike that “no one will
get hurt,” thereby meaning that someone is bound to do just that.
Unfortunately, the way things spiral out of control in James V. Simpson’s
script are too mundane to deliver the blistering, no-frills thrills such a
set-up suggests. The cast is fine as far as their one-dimensional roles go, and
Antal’s eye for widescreen results in compositions that efficiently speak to
characters’ isolation, claustrophobia and menace. The problem is that Armored isn’t clever or inventive enough
to seem like a high-stakes game, barreling through its stand-offs, shouting
matches and car chases with reasonable panache but also a dearth of
imagination.
I really liked this movie when I first saw it, incompletely, leaving it off at the 1 hour mark. The final half hour wasn't bad in any way, but it certainly showed that the script had run out of ideas. I almost wish I hadn't finished it.
Posted by: rob | March 30, 2010 at 01:13 AM