Armored
Matt Dillon in Armored
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Tuesday, 19, Jan 2010 08:16
Directed by Nimrod Antal, out January 22nd in cinemas, starring Matt Dillon, Laurence Fishburne, Jean Reno, Columbus Short, running time 85 mins.
What's it all about?
Ty Hackett (Short) returns from duty in Iraq after the death of his parents to care for his 14-year-old brother and try to save their house through taking a job with the armoured car service that employed his father. But when Ty's godfather and head driver Michael Cochrane (Dillon) reveals the team are planning an inside job that could land them $42 million, Ty faces a choice between doing the right thing and providing a future for himself and his brother.
As an example...
"It's clean. There's no bad guys - it's just us." - Cochrane
What the others say
"Armored won't win any prizes, but it does offer comforting evidence that there's still room for a well-crafted B movie among CG-laden spectacles." - Glenn Whipp, Los Angeles Times
"A so-so heist-gone-awry thriller, light on the thrills, Armored doesn't exactly take its audience captive." - Rob Nelson, Variety
So is it any good?
In Which Lie Did I Tell?, his second memoir of a working life in Hollywood, legendary screenwriter William Goldman discussed the shortcuts taken by filmmakers to zip their script along without the mundanity of reality interfering with a plot. George Clooney will have the perfect change ready to pay for his taxi cab, Drew Barrymore's not already using the phone line when the serial killer makes his growly call and the news story perfectly relevant to Jake Gyllenhaal's predicament just happens to be on the TV when he hits the on switch. We accept these coincidences with a pinch of salt, well aware that wasting time watching our A-lister brush his teeth when he could be fighting crime isn't worth the entrance fee.
It's in accepting the same behavioural quirks that only occur in celluloid that the key to enjoying Armored lies. Wondering whether Laurence Fishburne's chubby hothead really would unload his weapon without prejudice, or whether Columbus Short's ex-soldier would be so moralistic that he'd ignore his poverty to burn a truckload of stolen money, will get in the way of lying back and revelling in the ride that Nimrod Antal's confidently made B-movie takes the viewer on. It's rarely anything less than entirely formulaic, with a thudding industrial soundtrack, forced banter between its principals and a script that telegraphs its destination long before reaching it. Will Ty ignore his principals to join the robbery queue? Will Baines' (Fishburne) temper cause problems during the robbery? Will supposedly born-again Christian Palmer (Amaury Nolasco) return to his criminal instincts? What do you think??
But with a simple set-up of a good man pushed to his limit and a post-heist warehouse setting that smacks of a more trigger-happy Reservoir Dogs, Antal's bold camerawork keeps the audience involved despite having seen it all before. There's a misstep at the climax, with the director's striking cinematography let down by clumsy editing and - minimal spoiler alert - lots of dust, but Armored is brainless and brash fun nonetheless.
6/10
Lewis Bazley