Blindés

I'm not here to tell you "Armored" is Kubrickian, Hitchcockian or Fellini-esquire. Nope. Referenced directors are more like Don Siegel ("Charlie Varrick") and Walter Hill ("The Warriors"). Those two helmers didn't fool around with niceties like putting women in their movies. No skirts need apply. They unapologetically made guy movies. Guns, lots of guns. Men met violent death with a twitch of the jaw. Their movies were like a sap to the head. You want a friend? Get a dog.

"Armored" is so a guy movie. Dueling armored trucks? Bloody gunshot wounds? Exploding money? If that doesn't get the lizard part of your brain excited, then stay away.

At 88 minutes, "Armored" is all muscle without an ounce of fat. We meet six security guards who drive armored trucks, three per truck. The six, led by Matt Dillon, scheme up a fake hijack involving two trucks. Their mission one day is to deliver $42 million from the federal reserve (I think). The idea is to drive both trucks to a warehouse, stash the cash, then stage a hijack. Sure, the cops will suspect them, but if they stick together they'll get through it.

Trouble is, one of the six, played by Columbus Short, is a holdout. At first. But he faces eviction. And he's the guardian for his messed up younger brother. He needs cash bad.

Matt Dillon cajoles, pleads, persuades the holdout. No blood on anyone's hands. A clean getaway. All good, no bad. You'll be rich forever. Blue skies smiling at you ...

Right.

Everything goes to hell, of course. It's one damned thing after another and the stakes keep going up. And it almost all happens claustrophobically inside an abandoned warehouse somewhere in Los Angeles. In fact, the movie goes out of its way to project a backdrop of industrial urban decay. I happen to like industrial urban decay.

Kudos to Matt Dillon, who plays the top bad dog. He goes from charming to disappointed to frustrated to outraged to totally effing insane in the course of the movie. Love that guy.

Also, credit is due to the menacing, throbbing, blistering and totally sinister electronic soundtrack by John Murphy. I am guessing he's heard a few Tangerine Dream records.

Also, it's surprising that this is a PG-13 movie. I caught one — one! — f-bomb in this entire movie about violent tough-guy robbers. On some level, I like that. Take the kids.

The director is Nimrod Antal, a Hungarian who made a fine noir set in the Budapest subway system called "Kontroll." Screenwriter is an out-of-nowhere guy called James V. Simpson.

A lot of the people in this movie are just starting out. I am willing to bet the esteem given to this movie will rise as time goes on and these filmmakers advance in their careers.

Good, boring or bad? It's good. Worth your money? If you can spare it for a ticket, sure. Better than the trailer makes it seem? Yes, oddly.

There isn't much to the script - Guards working at armored truck company move vast amounts of cash. Guards see opportunity to retire as millionaires, one of them is too honest to go along with it all, and a well-laid plan goes to hell.

This could have been a poorly-executed Reservoir Dogs ripoff, but the skill of the cast and the director's ability to make just about anything tense pull it out of that realm and put it onto a solid footing.

I was disappointed. I usually like heist movies but this one - "Armored" - was not smart, if you want a heist movie where they put together a great plan for the heist and there is tension to see if the plan will succeed and if they can get away with the money this is not that type of movie.

The heist plan in this film is one that was put together by dumb brutes and is not a focus of the movie. The movie is all about bloody action scenes with guns. Probably the biggest star in the movie is Laurence Fishburne, and he has put on a lot of weight and gotten fat, and none of the acting is all that good for any of the characters. But even as a dumb action movie it isn't anything special or worth seeing.

I had been amazed by director Antal's Kontroll back in 2003. His first American project, Vacancy, was less impressive but a decent start. Armored is his second feature and while the visual signature is recognizable, the film never rises above the level of a B movie.

It's a shame because the main premise has all the ingredients for twists and turns and the ensemble cast featuring many quality actors should be able to deliver. Antal could have made a great heist film but instead goes for an action flick. Then again he could have shot a cool action flick but it doesn't really deliver in that department either.

What you are left with is one implausible situation after another, a group of poorly sketched characters bicker and fight over a sum of money. If you look past the sharp cinematography, cast and the tight music score, you're left with what could have been a below average direct-to-video featuring Van Damme or Seagal.

This was probably the most disappointing movie for me in quite some time.

I went to see this movie today, with hopes that it would involve an at least half-intelligent story. I was extremely disappointed, as it did not. The plot, and the decisions by the main character, were so far-fetched. I was hoping for a "Dog Day Afternoon"-type movie, but instead got something totally unacceptable. I actually found myself totally hoping for the "hero" to be knocked off, and I nearly walked out of the theater on several occasions when this should have happened but didn't. Heist movies are notmeant to be feel-good flicks, and this one tried to be just that. Every couple of minutes during the second half of the movie, I found myself saying, "no way". Without giving the whole story away, it revolved around an armored car guard who was financially down and out, and whose house was going into foreclosure. He was invited in on a heist, and accepted, only to back down once the action began. Weak.