Movie Review: Armored

Armored is the story of guard on a armored truck who’s colleagues decide to rob the truck. On the verge of losing his house and custody of his kid brother who he’s guardian of, the main character (whatever his name is, not important) decides to go along with the plan on the condition no one gets hurt.

So of course someone gets hurt and our hero decides he can’t be a part of this anymore. Said hero locks himself in the armored truck while the rest of the gang has about 50 minutes to get in and continue with the plan.

Armored is a slightly above average.. I guess you’d call it an action/thriller though there’s little action and it’s not that thrilling. The film has two failings which make it watchable but not necessarily good. First is the plan itself: basically the crew is going to stash the money and blame it on non-existent thieves. Forgive me but this ‘plan’ just seems retarded to me. Have these people never seen CSI? And the second the homeless guy wanders in and gets shot throwing the plan off track, that’s it. There’s no way these bozos can recover from this. But they spend the next hour trying to break into the truck. Yes, the armored truck. Gil Grissom and Mac Taylor would have these bozos before lunch.

The second problem is the movie’s hero. The guy’s an idiot. When a social worker stops by the house to check up on the delinquent young brother after he missed more school than attended, he proudly pipes up ‘I didn’t know he missed school’. Way to stay on top of things. Are you sure foster care is a bad thing? And not only is he an idiot, he’s a criminal idiot. This is not an innocent bystander that rises to the occasion when his former friends and colleagues make a run for the money, he’s in on it. He just chickens out when some homeless guy is in the wrong place at the wrong time. The movie’s ending completely ignores this and tries to wrap things up with a ‘lived happily ever after’ moment, and it’s total bullshit. If he told the truth about what happened he’d probably be going to jail for life – you know after the murder during the course of a felony.

Just another average action(ish) movie

***Update***
I must also point out it’s criminal this movie isn’t better considering the cast. Lawrence Fishbourne and Jean Reno, I expect better. And Fishbourne, put the Twinkie down and hit the gym. Morpheus wasn’t that long ago.

3 out of 5 Stars