Armored
Armored
PG-13 | 04 December 2009 (USA)
Armored Trailers

A crew of officers at an armored transport security firm risk their lives when they embark on the ultimate heist against their own company. Armed with a seemingly fool-proof plan, the men plan on making off with a fortune with harm to none. But when an unexpected witness interferes, the plan quickly unravels and all bets are off.

Reviews
lathe-of-heaven

Don't get me wrong, I am ALL for suspending disbelief. When EVERYONE else is complaining about how a film isn't 'Believable' or 'Realistic', I am the one usually rolling my eyes and telling these people bloody well to GET A FRIGG'N IMAGINATION!!! However... as one of the previous reviewers already stated in his Summary, the movie is indeed far too unbelievable to be able to involve the audience to any substantial degree. I DID like the set up during the first 30 minutes or so; the character building was done really well. Then, once the 'Action' started, any remote possibility of being drawn into a gripping story was, in my lowly and wretched opinion, quite lost. The technical quality of the film making in and of itself is done quite well though; I felt that the director knew what he was doing in that way.I don't usually like doing this, but: ***SPOILERS AHEAD***Okay, I am NOT the type of person to buy into this, "We are all at the core immoral, selfish animals, given the chance and circumstances, we will ALL (without exception practically) turn Evil if it suits our 'Needs'". Don't believe it, don't like it, don't buy it... PERIOD.Sooooo... the reason that I mention this is because this, to me anyway, is the overriding flaw of this film. It takes the first bloody third of the movie building up the friendship and caring among these people, two of the main principles basically being 'Family', and then on the turn of a mere moment, they casually without ANY hesitation decide to kill the main guy. Just like that. And then, they spend the rest of the film trying to do so. And, if that is not bad enough, then 2 of the other guys who have painstakingly been shown to be close like 'Brothers', when one of them buckles under the pressure, his best 'Friend' kills him with almost no hesitation what so ever. ***END SPOILERS***Just stupid... at least to me anyway. Like I say, the primary point of the WHOLE film, is simply to drive this Darwinian, chaotic Bull$h|t into the audience with the force of a sledgehammer.Sorry, that kind of ham-handed film making just simply isn't for me; it completely destroys any sense of believability at all. Now, if you put these kind of people into more complex circumstances, perhaps, and write a script where these circumstances (maybe even being somewhat far-fetched in themselves) happen in such a way to create an increasingly tense situation where certain characters truly almost seem to be 'FORCED' into some of these kinds of actions, and the audience is GENUINELY made to feel the moral dilemma of the situation, well, then MAYBE you just might be able to pull it off. But, certainly NOT with this kind of stupid, simplistic, and heavy-handed script.So, yeah, it is somewhat entertaining, but just about EVERY other Heist or Crime film is better.Oh, and the guy above who stated that this was the director's BEST film, in between his making 'VACANCY' & 'PREDATORS'... Uh huh... that guy has clearly been smok'n a $h!tload of CRACK with Rob Ford...

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Matthew McNaughton

Heist movies can be good (see: "The Italian Job") and bad (see: too many to list), but they can also be neither. This one is right about in the middle. With a lot of filler, boring dialogue and cringe-worthy hinge-popping, it's just a bore. The five minutes dedicated to "action" at the end weren't nearly enough to justify watching. But the exposition into Jimmy's artwork and school attendance was great. I don't understand why they couldn't have delved into that more. Maybe when the bad guys go to the house to pick up Jimmy he's actually at school and so they have to come up with another plan. Why didn't Ty just leave in the cop's car? Oh well, at least I was able to write enough sentences for it.

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changedname

Some security workers form a plan to steal millions from the money they're transporting. One guy is not so into the plan, but with a bit of coaxing and persuasion, along with mitigating personal circumstances, he eventually agrees to it. Now I don't think most people would be so haughty and judgemental as to take that to signify a black mark against these individuals. They worked hard, had hard lives, and really wanted a break and to live their dream lives. Who says that people always need to bend the knee and respect government no matter how unfairly they are treated by them? Maybe they would argue that they are owed the money, or it is their money, and why should their claim be any less valid or correct than one that the controlling body says? I thought we had a more educated, sophisticated population than that. I'm not saying stealing this money is "okay", but just that there are some complex issues here, it's not all just black and white. The idea we're meant to just automatically consider taking it to be "wrong" is just ridiculous. I thought we had progressed from the "police = good, robber = bad" mentality, it's not always so simple. The government is not a god to be worshipped and they don't define morality. In particular if you make a deal with someone and agree to do something, then you really should carry through with it. Otherwise you are a liar and a two-faced snitch. Okay, if he turned in all his friends and ruined their lives... that would be bad enough. But after he had sworn allegiance to them? This guy who messed everything up, betrayed his comrades, and he's supposed to be the hero? He would have been better off just taking the damn money, everyone would have been happy, probably nobody would have ended up dead and there would be no movie. The corperations have screwed so many innocent people over over the years that they won't even notice the money is gone. Seemingly to guard against feeling for the bad guys they had the robbers who were going ahead with the plan do some indefensible things. But you could see that this was really contrived, it didn't match the rest of the movie or their characters. It's insulting to robbers everywhere and all anti-government protesters, anarchists everywhere to paint them in such a picture. Just because they don't believe in the current corrupt system does not make them bad people. The guys seemed like normal, cool, fun guys.The movie doesn't have anything else other than the above. There are no good action scenes, almost everything takes place in a bare warehouse. There were a couple of bizarre and totally unrealistic situations, such as the good guys gluing money to the window so that the guys outside wouldn't see what they were doing. On the whole a rubbish movie. Jean Reno looks embarrassed to be in there as well he should.

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mancuniangr

I have long ago stop relying on critics reviews about films.Most of them are naming their selves critics and these people have the nerve to tell us ,that they are capable of understanding art and "good cinema" and we don't.But enough about them ,no one anyway takes them seriously today. But what really baffled me ,was reading user reviews here in IMDb(which generally i take into account) totally burying the film ,with arguments like "it didn't deliver" ,"with such good cast the movie wasn't that good", "DVD material" and stuff like that. I never understood the phrase "it didn't deliver" because by saying that ,you are admitting that you don't see all films the same way.I don't care if it's a b-movie ,or a 200m $ budget film ,my judgement will be made only of what i see on the screen.There isn't any logic in saying "you know what ,i expected this film to be 4/10 and it actually is 7/10 so it's a masterclass and i expected this film to be 10/10 ,but it proved to be 7/10 so it's rubbish".This is totally crazy. With all that i'm also referring to "the good cast" argument ,like that if you have 6 superstars they must all have the same contribution to the plot ,or their characters should be equally "strong". I also understand that if you are going to see a comedy ,you expect to laugh ,if you are going to see a horror film you expect the opposite and if you are going to see an action film you expect not to get bored.So can anyone explain to me how could you get bored with "Armored",when actually the film in its biggest part is like "24"(all happens in real time)and there is such fierce battle against time and between characters them shelves.It's a very good action film ,you don't want to go to sleep because you want to see who prevails and it's as simple as that. I think when you go to a movie ,you don't have the movie already played in your head and if the movie itself doesn't match "your's" is rubbish .Or if it does then it's great.It's wrong. And to end all that , i have to add that we must stop checking every single detail of a film like detectives.(There was a user in his review that didn't like ,that the contact between the tracks and the track company was one time every hour!!!!!!)

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