The employees of Eagle Shield, an armored-truck company, have lived amongst those factories their entire lives and envisioned themselves emerging from both the psychological and literal rubble of the surrounding neighborhoods. Despite similar hopes, all that Iraq veteran Ty (Columbus Short) wants is enough shifts to keep food on the table and a roof over the head of his brother and him -- their parents died recently. Ty's co-worker Cochrane (Matt Dillon) calls him family and, in turn, lets Ty in on a job he's pulling with the rest of their team: To fake a robbery at gunpoint and steal a little under 50-million dollars from their trucks. At first overcome by feelings of betrayal, Ty agrees to do it but locks himself inside one of the trucks when he witnesses the sadistic Baines (Laurence Fishburne) and Cochrane murder a homeless man to ensure secrecy.
First-time screenwriter James V. Simpson develops other personas to bounce off of these moral bumpers including Skeet Ulrich's guilt-ridden Dobbs, Amaury Nolasco's vicious man-of-God Palmer and an underused Jean Reno as the near-silent Quinn. The other player of note is Milo Ventimiglia, who plays Eckehart, a young cop who gets shot while investigating a truck's alarm. Crudely referred to as 'Panic Room on wheels', Armored develops its tone of moral decay quickly but not unconvincingly a while before Ty distracts Cochrane and Baines, who are all for executing Eckehart, for long enough to sneak the cop into his hold-out and begin hatching a plan for escape.
Armored is urgently paced, includes not one but two breathless truck chases and has the good sense not to harp on its protagonists war-hero background, putting it in similar leagues as something like Jaume Collet-Serra's Orphan, another genre entertainment constructed shrewdly and unfairly condescended to. Antal defies many of the structural stereotypes that his ilk has relied on so heavily but one does wish it had built just a bit more conflict and desperation into its 83 minutes. There seems to be just a bit too much calm in the eyes of these working men who have turned to murder so quickly and who are now watching their fiscal emancipation be threatened by a friend, though Fishburne does evoke a devilish unpredictability in Baines.
Despite its flaws, Antal's film stands head-and-shoulders above inept Oscar bait the likes of The Lovely Bones and Nine. And underneath its blatant topicality and cheap thrills, there is a conscious and a feral love for filmmaking that comes across in almost every still. It gives it an unexpected sincerity that makes its action and pulpy dialogue rooted to something intrinsically humane, which isn't to say that it doesn't still kick ass.
