Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
12/7/09
As
this site attests, I go to the movies an awful lot. Ideally, a couple
times a month, I see something I really love (ten best list time is right
around the corner, boys and girls!). Unfortunately, once or twice
a month, I'll also see something I really hate. Most of the movies
I see fall into the great expanse in between, getting the job done enough
to make me glad I went, but making enough mistakes and falling short in
enough areas to frustrate the unproduced screenwriter in me, forcing me
to work out my “they should have tweaked this, done that differently” issues
on these pages. Then there's the rare movie like Nimrod Antal's heist
thriller Armored, which does just about everything you could expect
it to do, makes no wrong steps, is well-acted across the board, and is
just generally solid without rising above the level of “that was pretty
good”. I was satisfied with Armored, and it does have a few
memorable moments. If more movies were like it, the weeks between
those Ten Best movies would be a lot less frustrating, but I probably wouldn't
have a website.
Ty
Hackett (Columbus Short) works for Eagle Shield security, an armored truck
service run by the intense Duncan Ashcroft (Fred Ward). Times are
tough for Ty, who was left with a mountain of medical bills and the need
to raise his younger brother Jimmy (Andre Jamal Kinney) after the death
of his parents. His home nears foreclosure and Ashcroft has no overtime
to spare. His fellow driver and close friend Mike (Matt Dillon) offers
a solution: join a group of his fellow drivers in a 42 million-dollar
heist he's planned. They are wily Quinn (Jean Reno), loose cannon
Baines (Laurence Fishburne), born again Palmer (Amaury Nolasco), and jittery
Dobbs (Skeet Ulrich). The plan is to pull two trucks with 21 million
each into a secluded industrial park, empty them into a hiding place only
they know, and stage the hijacking of the trucks, which they're destroy.
But when Baines kills a homeless man (Nick Jameson) who stumbles upon them,
the troubled war vet Ty can't go along with the plan anymore. He
locks himself in one of the trucks and tries to signal for help, but only
succeeds in getting a nearby police officer (Milo Ventimiglia) critically
wounded. Bit by bit, the thieves' plan is falling apart, but they
will take as many people with them as they can: can Ty escape before
any more blood ends up on his hands?
Armored's
best asset is its' cast: almost every significant role is played
by a veteran star, and they're all solid or better. The exception
is star Columbus Short, whose relative anonymity was knocked him to 8th
billed in his own movie, but he more than holds his own. Charismatic,
easy-going and exceptionally natural, he's an actor to watch. Dillon
has really perfected this sort of morally compromised leader of men, and
it's great to watch the way he'll go a long way to look out for his mentor's
son Ty, but only so far and after that all bets are off. It's great
fun to watch Fishburne play an uneducated hothead, which couldn't be farther
from his persona: Baines is that guy who's scary because you literally
don't know if he's going to nod, laugh or open fire each time he's spoken
to. Ulrich does a great job shedding his leading-man cool to nail
a twitchy character role. Ventimiglia excels at virtue, and he makes
a character who doesn't have a lot of lines or motivation easy to pull
for. Reno, Nolasco and Ward don't have a lot to do, but they fill
their space with poise and skill, and Nolasco gets a great exit scene.
Kinney does a great job in his couple scenes seeming like a kid who'd be
hell to try and raise, and Lorna Raver has a really memorable scene as
a Child Welfare agent who turns up the heat under Ty at just the moment
when it'll do the most harm.
Not
a lot goes on in James V. Simpsons' feature screenwriting debut, but everything
that does proceeds nicely in a point-to-point fashion and he has a great
sense of how easy it is for a movie heist to unravel and the brutally difficult
choices the simplest mistake can demand. Director Nimrod Antal (Vacancy)
once again shows great skill making a genre story seem to occur in our
real world, and he's a master of tactile horrors like Armored's
lengthy scenes of one guard holding a spike in place while another tries
to hammer it with a heavy weight to loosen the truck door's bolts.
The fear (which you know will be realized sooner or later) that somebody's
hand is gonna get hit is amazingly intense, particularly in light of the
fact that these are all bad guys.
Armored
never really builds up what you would call a head of steam and its' character
relationships aren't particularly detailed, but it's a lean, mean 80+ minute
genre machine that will entertain fans of its' impressive cast and the
Heist Gone Bad genre. If you really need to see a movie this weekend,
you could do worse. A lot worse. |
