Armored

Armored

What happens when armored car guards decide to take the very money they’re sworn to protect?  Well, a slightly below average heist movie that goes nowhere fast. 

Armored is easily one of those middle-of-the-road movies that can be watched, but quickly forgotten.  It does handle certain tension scenes extremely well, especially the scene where a police office confronts the guards.  Overall, the movie is down right middling.

The story isn’t that by the numbers, but that it feels like a second draft of script instead of a polished piece of work.  Compare this to Spike Lee’s Inside Man and you’ll see the difference. 

The other problem is that actors are completely wasted in the film.  With the exception of Ty Hackett (Columbus Short), we really don’t get any insight into why these people have set aside their morals and decided to rob the bank cars.  Laurence Fishburne is completely wasted as the off the rails guy in the group, we never get into why he’s the one with the hair-trigger.  Amaury Nolasco is supposed to be the one that feels guilty about his actions, but we never get a build up of his guilt, and the fate of his seems poorly tacked on.  Jean Reno isn’t really a factor at all. 

It’s sad that a great cast like this is wasted. 

So, what does fill up the movie’s time? 

We get a bunch of scenes with the bad guys banging the hinges off the armored doors.  I wish I could make that up, but it is the truth.  We don’t even get much in the way of the main bad guy trying to convince Columbus Short to leave the locked bank car. 

Director Nimród Antal just doesn’t have the flair here to make the scenes that compelling.  Yet, he should be commended for not making it a shaky-cam mess like Michael Bay either.  Antal simply does a TV director’s job here.  I am not making fun of TV directors, but they are brought in to get the job done and fit their directing styles firmly into the format of the TV shows.  Antal seems to not really have a signature to make him stand out, but he is still a new director and still has room to grow. 

Armored could have ended being so much more, but just comes across as dull and uneventful.  It is not a bad movie, but it feels like a sequel to the remake of Assault on Precinct 13.  If I know a heist movie doesn’t have the budget for action scenes, then I want a deeper character piece.  We don’t get that here. 

Grade: C

Ten years later, the Matrix has Morpheus’s grown daughter Montana Fishburne doing adult movies.  The machines are cruel.