In theory, Armored should be an awesome movie. The idea of a bunch of security guards robbing their own armored truck sounds like a bad ass heist film. Just the premise gets the mind racing. What's the plan? How do they plan on getting away with it? Unfortunately, the reality of Armored doesn't touch on either of those things. Instead we're left with an original idea told without original thought. And the Blu-ray is just more of the same. Read more after the jump.
Armored almost ruins itself before the first studio logo because it's rated PG-13. What movie about six men in a life or death situation would ever be PG-13? That said, the film is about a group of armed guards decide they are going to rob their own truck, stash the money and tell the boss they got robbed themselves. The players are an impressive bunch including Matt Dillon, Jean Reno and Laurence Fishburne. The star, however, is played Columbus Short (The Losers). His character Ty is a war veteran who lost both his parents and took this job to help support a younger brother. That's about as much character as we get on anyone in this movie and it isn't shown to us, it's told in pointless dialogue. Everyone else is incredibly one dimensional. So, when Ty changes his mind mid-heist, things get a little fishy and the film devolves into a bigger budget version of Cube, where the main character is basically stuck in one place.
Plot holes abound, the 88 minute movie drags and gets repetitive, character motivations are non-existent and even solid actors like Fishburne, Reno and Dillon do nothing more than rehash previous performances. (Watch this movie and tell me Dillon isn't playing Pat Healy from There's Something About Mary again. Seriously.) Short too is imitating someone, but at least he's channeling Denzel Washington.
If Armored itself is a weak movie then the Blu-ray is similarly weak. There's a Making of documentary that's nothing more than an elaborate puff piece with little insight, a commentary by a producer and two of the lesser stars of the film (Skeet Ulrich and Milo Ventimiglia) and then two decent docs on Production Design and Stunt coordinating which would be great...if the movie had more than one major set or more than one major stunt scene.
Watching Armored on Blu-ray isn't the worst thing in the world. The picture actually looks pretty great and the sound design, in 5.1 DTS has some moments, unfortunately most of the time that picture and sound is totally pointless and unexciting.
