One of the characters says in the film “Nobody’s going to get hurt.” I did: it hurt sitting through this monstrosity.
Ty Hackett’s parents have died. He has to take care of his brother and his parents left them with a house that’s set to be foreclosed. Ty doesn’t make enough money working as a security guard for an armored car transport service. He works with a bunch of guys and when they approach him with the opportunity to get the money he needs he at first says no – they want to steal $42 million from a pickup they will be running and they plan on staging an armed robbery so they can get away with the money. Ty eventually joins in but has an epiphany during the robbery & tries to stop the others from taking the money. Ty locks himself in one of the two armored vans with half the money, and head of the group Mike (Matt Dillon) decides that it’s all or nothing: he gets his group to work on opening the van before the cops arrive.
All five of them can do better. Much better.
It’s set up to be a massive race against time but the end result is a comatose state of excitement. When the robbers realise they can break into the van by loosening the hinges on the doors the next 40 minutes is them incessantly banging a piece of metal onto another piece of metal, with bits of piss-poor interactions spliced inbetween. Director Nimród Antal (Vacancy) tries to use the banging as an epicentre of the plot development but in reality all this achieves is infuriating its audience – seriously, if you’re easily annoyed the banging will drive you crazy.
Speaking of plot development, the way the plot pans out is too contrived and noticeably scripted, the characters are all idiots and the ending is predictable: after Ty’s realisation it’s just a case of waiting for the inevitable to happen. It’s not like that wait is better than the awful ending though: you’re subjected to a bunch of actors each trying to convince you they’re all the best thing in the film by sauntering around & pouring crappy one-liners & sub-par dialogue out of their mouths. I expected better from the likes of Jean Reno, Matt Dillon & Laurence Fishburne in particular.
The scriptwriters give Fishburne a shotgun his character’s supposed to be enamoured with – he holds the gun though with such disdain. Reno was just plain unlucky: he probably took the part expecting to get a significant role. Instead he is just a face for most of the film and he’s ushered off-screen after a certain point & you hardly see him again. Dillon is given a role that no actor could portray convincingly- the first part of the film sees his character Mike as a nice guy and a godfather to Ty. As soon as Mike asks Ty to help with the heist, the character flips and becomes a jackass which leads slowly to him turning into an arrogant, cocky and ruthless criminal. It’s both incredibly confusing and highly implausible: there’s absolutely no indication that Mike is a merciless criminal but by the end of the film he’s exactly that.
An appearance from Milo Ventimiglia (Peter from Heroes) as a good-willed cop unwillingly caught up in the heist may have saved this film from crashing and burning, but he gets shot before he has a chance to do anything to help.
Overall Impressions:
My thoughts exactly.
This film is a bigger failure than the attempted robbery within it. The fact that Jean Reno, Laurence Fishburne and Matt Dillon are in this makes it that much worse: they can do so much better than this. Armored is an absolute tragedy right from the start: you feel sickly watching it. There is no reward for perservering through the dire cinematography, horrendous acting, god-awful direction, poor dialogue and shoddy camerawork.
It’s absolutely calamitous – without joking, the best part of the film is when you realise the end is nigh. The whole argument of “the film has B-movie spirit” is pointless: if I wanted to watch a B-movie I would have. But no, I chose to watch a film expecting good acting, an upcoming director showing his potential and a possibly entertaining plot. I got none of those: I got a supposed A-movie using B-movie status as a scapegoat for its own ineptitude.
You’re best just watching the trailer – it’s too revealing & it makes the film look far better than it is. Actually, don’t: Armored isn’t worth a moment of your time, even if it is just watching the trailer.
Rating: 
