It's Just Movies

— by MARIUSZ ZUBROWSKI —

Imagine this scenario: You desperately need money and your co-worker at the armored truck company offers you the chance to steal a truck that contains $42 million. On top of that, child-welfare services wants to take your brother out of your guardianship. The argument “We’re not going to get caught,” doesn’t seem so far-fetched now does it?

Well, Ty Hackett can relate to this hypothetical scene — in fact, he took part in a similar one. In Nimrod Antal’s “Armored,” Ty Hackett, who is played by Columbus Short, is co-erced by his senior co-workers to help them steal the armored trucks that they’re supposed to be guarding.

Hakett is a army veteran who joins an armored truck company after both of his parents died, leaving his brother in his custody. After his partners play a complex practical joke on Short that deems him “worthy,” they tell him their plan to steal two trucks containing more than $42 million. But this seemingly simple heist goes terribly wrong, as all heists do in the world of Hollywood.

The first 20 minutes are terribly boring. Hackett isn’t fascinating as a character in any aspect. There is nothing that has not been done before, and Nimrod should have just given him a drinking problem to make it 100 percent cliché.

Other characters, such as Mike Cochrone (Matt Dillon), Quinn (Jean Reno) and Baines (Laurence Fishburne) barely get developed throughout the whole ordeal and are just unlikeable and one-dimensional.

However, once the heist commences, so does the entertainment. Most of the scenes in the second act take place inside a warehouse, where we are presented a claustrophobic environment for the protagonist Hackett as he battles his conscience after the heist goes terribly wrong.

The acting is nothing to write home about. It’s just average. Dillon plays the same character that he does in every one of his films and Short isn’t anything above average. Fishburne is the mostly memorable from the entire ordeal, but that’s probably because his character is the most unlikeable. It’s a shame that nobody stands out, because the cast isn’t bad but the characters are merely poorly developed.

“Armored” is not terrible, but it’s nothing to rush to the theaters to watch. This is mostly to blame for the under-developed script and characters, but also because of the familiarity of the genre. It’s a thriller without twists and it almost works due to some fresh ideas, but sadly it never drives out of the realm of generic material.

Follow It’s Just Movies on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ItsJustMovies.