Armor

Alright ... I know some peoples may say its a bit of in bad taste as Bruce Willis may had known he was sick and just decided to make as many movie (and dollars) as he could before it was too late, but he often had low effort performances in low budget DTV movies in the last 7-8 years of his career and that whats Stallone in this remind me.

Don't get me wrong. I love Tulsa King and i do think Stallone can still be pretty good on screen even tough he is approaching 80 years old. Of course at one point at that age the action roles may dry up, but he still has presence. He still look cool and badass.

But this movie... it just feel like they knew putting his name on it would sell it because otherwise NOBODY would had watch this.

The movie is not horrible ... Its not an action movie at all, more like a "thriller" (and i use it loosely) and there is some interesting parts between the father and son dynamic. But despite these characters being somewhat likable, you wonder how they could stretch this into a 90 minutes movie.

This could had been a 40 minute short (or an episode of a TV show) and it would had made sense. But the plot is way too thin to go 90 minutes and there is obvious flaws you gonna spot on the bad guys not being able to break in.

Very minimal use of CGI but you can spot it very easily when it happen, wich show the budget was VERY low.

If Stallone's name was not on it, this movie would had hardly be rent or bough by much peoples. Fan of him or not, you can skip it.

I knew that "Armor" was going to be a bad film. How could one not? One look at the poster or a single viewing of the trailer reveals all that someone would need to know about this movie, which is better known as something called a "geezer teaser." According to Google, a geezer teaser is a movie that features older, well-known male actors, or "geezers", in prominent roles in promotional material, but is usually released directly to video and distributed through video on demand - additionally, the well-known male actors (in this case, Stallone) will only appear sporadically in the film itself. Now, I knew this going into "Armor;" however, I found myself in the mood to watch a bad, cheesy action film, so I decided to spend $6.99 and rent this movie on Amazon Prime. Big mistake.

Truth be told, for the first 25 minutes or so, I didn't find "Armor" to be all that bad. Yeah, it looked as basic as a film can, what with bare-bones editing and a generic soundtrack, but I found some things to be kind of interesting, like the character of Jason Patric. Patric plays a recovering alcoholic who never actually took the time to recover. The film opens with him waking up at 7 a.m. And immediately retrieving a hidden bottle of vodka from his refrigerator. As one who enjoys drinking and enjoys movies that feature people who drink, I thought this character introduction was unique enough to warrant my interest - you just have to look past the inconsistency, which is that Patric's character lives alone, so why would he feel the need to hide a bottle of alcohol in his own home that only he lives at, and that seemingly no one ever visits? Regardless, I was intrigued.

Patric's character is further revealed to work as an armored truck driver with his son, played by Miller Garfinkel. Their relationship seems slightly strained for one reason or another, but they get along well enough to work together. Alas, one day they find themselves hauling goods of particular value, goods that are wanted by Sylvester Stallone and his merry band of thieves. Enter "Armor's" second act - the heist.

30 minutes go by before a gun is fired in this film - 30 minutes go by before the titular armored truck heist begins. But when it does begin, it's exciting enough, or at least, as exciting as it can be for a film like this. If you push all logical thoughts into the back of your brain, (one of those thoughts being, "Why doesn't Jason Patric just ram the bullet proof, armored truck into Sly's gang and drive away?") you can somewhat enjoy the sequence that features Sly and his criminals cornering Patric and his son on a bridge in order to rob the contents of their truck. Yes, the special effects in this movie are some of the worst I've seen in a 2024 release, but it's always entertaining to watch Stallone fire a gun, and that's no different here.

Besides this initial action sequence, "Armor" has nary anything else to enjoy. As, after this initial action sequence, the rest of the film basically consists of Patric and his son talking to each other while stuck inside of their truck. Now, this could - on paper - be exciting, if Patric and his son were conversating about ways to escape their captors. However, instead of doing that, they decide to take the time to talk about past mistakes and old grudges - perhaps conversations that would be better suited for when people weren't trying to kill them. So, most of "Armor's" runtime consists of Patric and his son reminiscing about the past, and Sly and his gang yelling at each other for one reason or another. It's not exciting, it's not interesting, and it's definitely not anything you'd expect to see in an action film. In short: "Armor" is boring.

One positive I can give this movie is that Stallone was in it for more than I thought he would be. That said, he really doesn't have much to do besides talk to his cronies and boss them around. Also, I found Sly's character to be inconsistent, to say the least - "The plan was, and is, they don't die," Sly says; this is after him and his crew spend five minutes shooting armor piercing rounds at our main characters. Being a killer isn't in his nature, Stallone explains. If that's the case, maybe a more cautious approach would've been appreciated if he really didn't want to kill anyone?

In the end, "Armor" is a terrible film. I thought it might be good for a lazy, late night watch, but it's not. "Armor" is quite literally good for nothing. If you're bored, don't watch this. If you're a fan of Stallone, don't watch this. If you like good action movies, don't watch this. What should you do? Don't watch this.

I decided to give this a go when I first checked the average rating and it was just over 5/10, as I'm a fan of Sly.

After coming back to review this mess after seeing it and notice the average rating is now down to 3.7/10, that's still too high. I just checked what the actual critics rated this mess on RT, and I can't say I've ever seen the Tomatometer from 16 critics show 0%! I should have checked RT first before wasting time seeing this joke of a movie.

For starters, a fifth grade drama class can write and direct a better and more believable story. The filmmakers also clearly didn't do their research (even a quick Google search would've helped!) on protocols and procedures and what to do/not do when armored drivers are in a situation, because everything they did in this movie was laughably wrong and unrealistic.

Next you have a large team of well equipped and (seemingly) prepared heist team that are clearly clueless when the time comes for the heist. A bunch of kids could've had that truck open faster.

The directing was worse than amateur hour, even when apparently (according to the movie's Wikipedia page) the listed director Justin Routt was just a pawn for the more experienced producer and actual director, Randall Emmett, which would explain why this mess was so bad, as his last bunch of films were rated similar to this. Not sure why Emmett pulled this stunt,, but clearly his cast and crew were not happy, and that dynamic was clearly visible in this production.

The writing simply had no main plot. It was three side stories, none of which had any relation to each other and the actual heist.

Even with the normally comfortable and short 99 min runtime, this felt much longer and boring when none of the boring and pointless side stories added anything to the movie's main story. It was just ongoing verbal diarrhea of useless family drama.

It's a generous 2/10, all going to Sly for doing his best with the nonsense he was given to work with.

James Broody (Jason Patric) and his son Casey (Josh Wiggins) drive an old armor truck in the deep south. James is a ex-cop who is still haunted by the lost of his wife. They are attacked by a robbery crew led by Rook (Sylvester Stallone) with hothead Smoke (Dash Mihok).

This is lowly rated. It's even lower than I expected and that's interesting. It's a big name in an obvious B-movie syndrome. Sly has a TV show and he could probably do better than this movie. With the decline of cinema, this is one of those mid-tier 90's thrillers that is going out of business or being downgraded to B-movies. This movie is obviously done on the cheap. There are good actors, but the seams are showing. The writing is thin. The plot is a bare minimum. The action has some good moments but plenty of nitpicks. I can write off the fake gunfight for safety reason. The fake underwater work is simply bad. They shouldn't show it if they can't film it. It should be a waiting sequence where the audience waits for the heads to pop up. The big name in small movie syndrome really hits this one hard. I've seen much worst B-movies.

I will start off by saying, nobody from this film will be gracing the red carpet at the Oscar's. If they do end up there then it won't be for the performances in this film.

Patric and his son are armoured van drivers. They get ambushed by Sly's crew. Most of the film is set on a bridge with Patric and son trying to survive, Sly and his crew trying to get into said van.

I've given it a five, I could've gone to six if I was feeling generous. It isn't great but it entertained me for an hour and a half. I never considered turning off after ten minutes, which is rare these days.

If you've nothing else to watch then give it a go. If your expectations are low then you won't disappointed if you hate it!