Friday, April 2, 2010

Armored - DVD Review

**

Starring Matt Dillon, Columbus Short, Jean Reno, Laurence Fishburne, Amaury Nolasco, Skeet Ulrich, Fred Ward and Milo Ventimiglia.
Directed by Nimrod Antel.

A pet peeve of mine is when the lurching forward of the plot requires some main characters to be really, really stupid. Now I can accept first-time criminals being stupid on their first attempt, but there are so many lapses in judgment and observation that I couldn't suspend my disbelief. It plays like a very-watered-down, dumbed down Reservoir Dogs.

A group of six armored-truck drivers decide to rob their own truck and claim they were jacked. But as they unload the money in an abandoned warehouse (of course), a homeless man sees them. When they argue about what to do, one of them just shoots the guy. That crosses the line for the Iraq War vet (Columbus Short) of the bunch, who locks himself in one of the trucks and hopes to stay secure until cops or help can arrive.

That set-up gets us to the 45-minute mark, and with all that time, it doesn't really do much to establish characterization. It relies on the recognizable faces to carry the day I guess. But while the other five guards have the armored truck surrounded, they never notice the two or three times he sneaks out. Every time he sets up a distraction, the guards stare at it until it's too late to stop him.

Closing credits start at the 83-minute mark.
I'm not going to complain it was too short.

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