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In Armored, we get a story that could have just as easily been told this year as it could have been sixty years ago. Its central 'good-guy' figure, Ty (Columbus Short), is an Iraq war veteran who takes a job working as an armored-car delivery-man, who has the backup of other members on the crew who knew his father. They plan a heist so that Ty's house isn't foreclosed by the bank (and that his younger brother isn't taken away from him for being a delinquent), and a promise is made to him by his friends that no harm will come to anyone during the heist. This, of course, isn't true, as a vagrant is in the warehouse where the armored car thieves attempt to stash the millions, and then it turns into a ticking-clock scenario where Ty has to find a way out before the other members fully turn on him in real-time (the cars have to be back in an hour, you see, or the whole plan is a bust).Replace Germany with Iraq and you could have a similar scenario play out, and one can even see certain actors filling in shoes played by actors of today (maybe Farley Granger for Columbus Short- certainly they're both bland enough- and a heavy like Lionel Stander in Laurence Fishburne's role or Kirk Douglas in Matt Dillon's part). I kept thinking of this during Armored, perhaps as a way to amuse myself while the story kept chugging away on its somewhat-predictable gears. Somewhat in that there are a couple of twists that one doesn't expect (one involving a crew-member's suicide), and that there is some heavy action a couple of times, handled competently by director Nimrod Antal.It's never too poorly acted, save for Short as I mentioned, and its story moves along at a quick enough pace to cover over the fact that it's characters with only so much personality to get them through the picture (i.e. Fishburne's a drunk and violent, which suits him fine as he appears to have rolled right out of bed before some shots). But mentioning film-noir in this context should, I hope, be meant as a compliment. Antal works in a style that is indebt to the far away past of crime thrillers as much as more modern fare that ask for action over character development. It's nice to see an action flick without CGI, and the actors are game for the film aiming for simple, meat-and-potatoes B-movie roots. It can work just as well seeing it in a theater, or on video, or late night on cable (the latter sounds about right really), and seeing it once, it's not a disappointment. That it's also kind of forgettable is also a little sad.
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