Armor – Armor – Gamereactor

Armor – Armor – Gamereactor

A father and son work as security guards and transport money in an armored truck. The son is a simple man with a pregnant wife, a somewhat neurotic person who worries about everything and nothing, while the father is an alcoholic who lost his new wife and small child in a car accident. The tragedy caused him to fall back into the bottle, making it difficult for him to stay afloat and control his addiction. Then, during a standard delivery, father and son come across a group of former special forces soldiers who have become robbers and are after the cargo they are transporting, which they want to capture at any price.

It’s downright tragic in many ways when old, popular stars, and in this case even movie icons like Sylvester Stallone (and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, and others) don’t seem to realize that their age makes them unfit to stroll around in front of the camera like a shadow of her former self. In my world this is downright unworthy, of which Armor is clear proof.

Stallone is 78 years old. He’s tortured his body over the years with daredevil stunts, steroids, surgeries and everything in between, making him look just as old as he does now. Sly can barely walk upright. He has a hard time holding an automatic rifle without looking confused, he speaks slurred (more so than ever), and therefore fails to portray a grizzled, deadly, hardcore career criminal with any credibility. It looks like the retirement home around the corner dismissed its oldest resident as a thief on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon.

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Sly could have played this role credibly 25 years ago.

Sly and his thieves confront the father and son duo (we never learn their names) on an old rusty, abandoned bridge in the middle of nowhere as they try to break into the bulletproof truck. Here begins what director Justin Routt clearly intended to be a nail-biting, suspenseful story about pressure, stress and tough men doing tough things. The father and son lock themselves in the truck while Stallone and his cronies fire thousands of shots at it from their assault rifles, which in the end only results in me as a viewer witnessing what look like CGI-based muzzle flashes and hits they would have been made in Microsoft Word, while the hardened robbers make more faces than a circus clown.

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This goes on for about an hour and nothing more happens. Stallone tries to chat a bit with the father and son and says some harsh things, like they’re “fried” and should give up, while the father in the truck (Jason Patric) politely replies that he’s an ex-cop , who is tough and resilient and that he and his son will never give up. And so it goes on, for a good half hour (or longer). Then the film ends in the most abrupt way I’ve seen all year, and it’s pretty easy to conclude that this is the worst film of the year so far. I read that Stallone earned $10 million for seven hours of work on this film, and while that’s impressive in its own way, it’s also a ridiculous example of how we treat one of cinema’s biggest action stars today.

Whatever you do, no matter how exciting you may find a hunched, slurring 78-year-old closing his eyes as he fires blanks, do not, under any circumstances, watch “Armor.” At all. In fact, you should forget that this film even exists.

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