Armored

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Movie Details

• Genre: Action/Adventure, Suspense/Thriller
• Release Date: 2009-12-04 Nationwide
• Running Time: 88 min.
• Director: Nimród Antal
• Cast: Columbus Short, Matt Dillon, Laurence Fishburne, Jean Reno, Skeet Ulrich, Amaury Nolasco, Milo Ventimiglia, Fred Ward, Nick Jameson, Andrew Fiscella
• Producer: Joshua Donen, Dan Farah
• Writer: James V. Simpson
• Distributor: Sony/Screen Gems
• Official Site: Armored Official Site

A crew of working-stiff armored truck personnel decide to lift their own payload with a heist plan that no one would ever attempt outside a first-draft screenplay. Dramatis personae are introduced picking up their ID tag personalities, so that you can care when they're eventually in harm's way. (Milo Ventimiglia's cop informs you that he has a dad; Amaury Nolasco's gets a ribbing for his Bible.) The camaraderie in the Eagle Shield Transport locker room is strained stuff, despite a capable ensemble cast that includes Matt Dillon and Larry Fishburne—and Jean Reno's sore-thumb presence as “Quinn,” an obvious bid for Euros. Director Nimród Antal shows the same weakness for augmenting action with swaggering beats that marked his debut, Kontroll (per Dillon's character: "It looks like you're overcompensating"), but he settles in once arrived at the film's set-piece destination: In a gutted factory to divvy up the money—Armored gives a good tour of industrial L.A.—a stand-off results when the new guy on the crew (that's former dancer-choreographer Columbus Short) gets an attack of conscience. Antal is never much beyond serviceable here, but he does make a chase-duel between two entirely identical armored cars almost decipherable, which is no mean feat.