Disappointment for a huge fan!

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

You know this was actually pretty good, at least it started out strong anyways, it does start to unravel a bit after the actual heist takes place and I had a bit of a problem with Matt Dillon, who tries too hard to be Mr. cool but the rest of the extended cast was very good. I especially liked the storyline involving Columbus Short as 'Ty' and his brother -even if it wasn't all that original, it still had me interested and he did a great job.All in it's a pretty solid action movie about a group of armoured car guards who hatch a supposedly perfect plan to steal one of their own trucks containing millions of dollars. Of course the heist spirals out of control, tensions flare and blood is spilled.And while this tries to be another 'The Bank Job' or 'The Insider' (and fails) it's still a decent enough story with solid performances from (Jean Reno, Laurence Fishburne, Skeet Ulrich & Milo Ventimiglia) You could do much worse from an action movie. 10/5/14

Sandwiched between his VACANCY and PREDATORS, ARMORED is director Nimrod Antal's best film, although to be fair that isn't saying much. It's one of those single-location action movies with a relatively low budget (by Hollywood standards), most of which has been spent on assembling an ensemble cast of tough-guy actors. Matt Dillon, Jean Reno, Laurence Fishburne and Fred Ward, all of whom have appeared in great movies, are in supply here, albeit in supporting roles.It's also a chance to find out what happened to SCREAM's Skeet Ulrich, if anybody cares these days. Sadly, there are two problems with ARMORED; the first is the no-name lead Columbus Short, a guy whose acting skills are pretty insipid, so you don't really care much about whether his character wins or loses. The second is the PG-13 rating, which eliminates the kind of hard-hitting violence of the early DIE HARDs that this film so desperately needs.Saying that, it turns out to be a pretty entertaining little thriller. The storyline is basic in the extreme, but I'm a sucker for these single-location movies and in some ways the simplicity of the plot is more appealing than something in which the plotting is overdone, like MAN ON A LEDGE. The narrative is lean, pared-down and propelled by some good, surprising twists thrown into the mix. All of the big names give solid performances, and if it does get a little cheesy at times then that's par for the course. I'd rather a film be cheesy and entertaining than realistic and dull!

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.

The idea (in an deserted industrial location, thieves working for a security company trying to force their way into an armored truck with a good guy inside) reminds me of a 1986 french Canadian thriller called "Pouvoir intime" (see reference below) :http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091785/This Quebec-made movie was co-written and directed by Emmy Award winner & nominee Yves Simoneau - Bury my heart at Wounded Knee (2007).Maybe the makers of "Armored" never heard of this movie, but I just thought it would be fair to mention that this idea has been explored before.