Blu-Ray Review: Armored

Okay, so Armored arrived on my doorstep about a week before it was set for release on Blu-Ray and DVD in the UK.  I had the great opportunity to review the stunning Blu-Ray version of the movie, which is great — but would the movie match the quality — always a worry on the HD format.

I had not heard a great deal about Armored prior to recieving the disk. I had heard of it, but for the life of me I cannot remember the film playing in cinemas in the UK. Not a great start. I also was not a huge fan of director Nimrod Antal‘s previous effort Vacancy. Oh, this isn’t going great. But then, Antal has been entrusted with helming the new Predators movie, so maybe this won’t be all that bad.

The story is simple. It’s based around a crew of security fan drivers who transport money all of Los Angeles in this super-duper high-tech vans. One daymore money that usual is being transported from one location to another nd the crew decide to hit their company for all that they’ve got. It’s the perfect plan, and one where nobody will get hurt. Will they?

Well, obviously it all goes wrong for everyone involved, but that’s as far as I will go in terms of revealing any more around the plot as I do not wants to spoil anything.

The film is actually one that boasts a pretty amazing cast. Matt Dillon, Jean Reno, Laurence Fishburne, Skeet Ulrich and the legendary Fred Ward star along with Columbus Short, who has the break out role in the lead. Dillon plays a badass, Fishburne plays an even bigger badass (albeit a crazy badass) and Jean Reno plays well, Jean Reno — no, really he’s quite good in a rather under-developed role for the French actor. Ward plays their boss and Short plays the central character of the guy who doesn’t want to get involved, but does as he needs the money to support his troublesome teenage brother.

The film has all the hallmarks of a film that will fail. Big-budget, limited cinema release, big-name cult cast, it’s in the action genre and oh, it has a director with only one Hollywood film to his name. The biggest problem with this movie is that despite all of this — it’s bloody good.

It kind of reminded me, and my girfriend who sat down to watch it with me, of Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. It’s a really simple story — heist gone wrong, multiple highly diverse characters, a lot of money and everyone starts to turn against one another. You have Mr. Blonde in the form of Larry Fishburne’s character, Mr. White (Matt Dillon) and even a cop who gets taken hostage — hang on — with a bullet wound to the abdomen. The film even shares a DOP — Andrzej Sejula. Freaky. But I really liked it, and the fact that you may not have hard much about it adds to its effect. Columbus Short is great in his deserved lead, Fish is great as the psychotic colleague and so is Matt Dillon in a draker role than usual in possibly his best piece of work since Wild Things.

The film looks great on Blu-Ray too and is well worth investing an extra few pounds for the high-def version.

I find it hard to fault as a good stay-at-home actioner. Sure, some of the characters are under-developed as I mentioned earlier, but for a film like this dos it matter?

Not really.

The Extras:

A good set. Not great, but worthy of the movie. I couldn’t get the BD-Live stuff to work, but that is probably more my set up. There’s a few little behind the scenes features and a great filmmaker focussed commentary.

Here’s the rest:

• Blu-ray Exclusive: movieIQ+sync and BD-Live connect you to real-time information on the cast, music, trivia and more while watching the movie!
• Producer and Cast Commentary
• Planning the Heist: Making of
• Crash Course: Stunts
• Armed and Underground: Production Design

The Grades:
Film: B+
Extras: B-