Armored (2009)

Decent, well-paced thriller about a group of guards for an armored car service that decides to fake a hijacking and make off with their bounty themselves. Colombus Short is the protaganist, an Iraq vet with a troublesome little brother in his custody and an imminent bank foreclosure on his house; as soon as we know there is a heist, we know he will go along begrudgingly but end up being the voice of reason (this isn't the most original flick in the world). The rest of his crew is loaded with heavies, including Matt Dillon as his godfather and mentor, Laurence Fishburne, Jean Reno, and Skeet Ulrich. Once the heist gets going, the characters are basically reduced to archetypes, but Ulrich, surprisingly, comes closest to creating a 3-dimensional, realistic character (Short, as always, comes off as earnest but trying too hard). Nimrod Antal, who had a decent hit this summer with Predators, shoots the hell out of a bare-bones thriller script, and keeps the action moving at all times; the locations, staging, and editing do plenty to maintain the tension and keep the focus on the action and the conflict. Even the acting comes off better than it should (especially Milo Ventimiglia, who actually proves endearing and not annoying, for once), given the dialogue, and Fred Ward, in his couple of scenes, comes out of this thing looking like a badass because of a few key decisions made toward the presentation of his character.

Slightly Recommended for fans of heist or standoff films. This is not some lost classic, but it is good enough to justify the successful career that Antal will, hopefully, have in the future.