Armored

Notwithstanding the star studded cast, this is basically your quintessential heist movie. A relatively unknown Columbus Short gets the main role and they've inexplicably filled out the supporting cast with far more prominent actors that include the likes of Jean Reno going for a different role as a redshirt baddie rather than the recent spate of bumbling sidekick roles he's had in the Pink Panther movies along with Laurence Fishburne playing an enthusiastically murderous loose cannon with malicious glee.

The main protagonist in the movie is one Ty Hackett (Short), a down on his luck, Silver Star toting Iraq War vet who has to raise his adolescent brother Jimmy after his parents buy the farm. To make ends tenuously meet, he gets a job at Eagle Shield Security, an armoured car service that his late dad worked for and which his godfather, by sheer miraculous coincidence also works at too. With a foreclosure on his home and his brother possibly ending up in foster care, he gets persuaded to be an accomplice in an inside job to make off with 42 million smackeroos. The plan seems to go off without a hitch but Murphy's Law naturally shows itself with a vengeance. Hackett has a change of heart and locks himself with half of the loot inside an armoured truck for most of the film. With the clock ticking, the band of thieves have to sort the problem out right quick which leads to most of the drama in the movie. Reno and Fishburne's talents are wasted as throwaway redshirts and Hackett does a decent if unremarkable job.

While the story is naff, the transfer is exemplary with fine detail across the board from the dirt on the factory floor to the various embellishments on their uniforms. The contrast is excellent, especially as the
as the film is mostly dark, literally and figuratively speaking with most of the uniforms and the scenery in predominantly dark or gray hues. The audio is just as good, with an excellent lossless soundtrack and good output on the high and low end of the audio spectrum. This disc is not too bad to showcase your home theatre. Now if only the story was better.