Armored

When I was looking into the actors in Armored, I came to a realization: Matt Dillon is not in good movies.  Sure, I laughed at There's Something About Mary when I was stupid and in high school, but that shouldn't be his career highlight.  Considering that the lead roles in this film are split between Dillon and Columbus Short, who is more famous for dancing than acting, Armored might not be a great film.

After being awarded the Silver Star for his service in the War on Terror, Ty (Columbus Short) has been having a rough time back home.  With his parents gone, Ty is the sole guardian of his brother Jimmy (Andre Kinney).  To make ends meet, Ty has taken on a job as a security guard for armored cars.  He's second-generation in his job; the rest of his co-workers remember his father fondly, particularly his godfather, Mike (Matt Dillon).  After work one day, the guards head to a bar to unwind and talk a bit about some of the more famous armored car robberies; afterward, Mike tells Ty that the whole crew is going to rob their own armored car and split the money, which amounts to $7 million each.  At first, he's reluctant, but when social services threaten to take Jimmy away, Ty agrees to help, as long as nobody gets hurt.  Well, guess what?  People get hurt.  Ty won't stand for that, so he fights back against the other five guards.

I won't say that the acting was great in this movie, but it wasn't terrible.  In the lead role, Columbus Short did much better than any professional dancer should be expected to do in a feature film.  No, he wasn't amazing, but he was halfway decent, at long as he wasn't supposed to convey feelings.  Matt Dillon was...well, Matt Dillon.  Nothing new there.  The other veteran actors were not particularly impressive, either.  Skeet Ulrich and Jean Reno just showed up long enough to cash a paycheck.   Amaury Nolasco, who I normally despise, surprised me by playing a character with at least a little depth, but that came to naught when his character unexpectedly committed suicide...I assume.  They never showed the body, which suggests that the budget wasn't very high for this movie.  Laurence Fishburne normally adds a little bit of class to the movies he is in, but here, he plays a violent dimwit.  It's a surprisingly dull role for him, but he was in Biker Boyz, so I probably shouldn't be surprised.

Hello?  Is my dignity there?  Well, can I leave a message?

As for young Andre Kinney, I suppose his not-terribly-intelligent and graffiti-loving role here is a step up from his recurring role on Hannah Montana, but he is still several blocks away from being a real actor.  Milo Ventimiglia also makes an appearance as a police officer, but he gets shot pretty early on, resulting in him talking with a funny voice; I don't think I've seen him in a movie without a weird voice, so I'm still not sure if he can act in feature films.


Mediocre acting does not necessarily doom a film (Avatar, anyone?), but mediocre direction doesn't help, either.  Nimrod Antal is a capable action director, I will admit.  I was able to follow the plot, too, which shows that he has the rudimentary skills to tell a story.  As for directing actors to actually act...well, I don't see any proof of that here.  The dramatic scenes aren't bad, but they aren't very natural, especially between Short and...well, anyone.  Take, for instance, the scene where Short comes home to find Kinney spray painting an owl --- and owl! --- on their kitchen wall.  Instead of them butting heads like a surly teen and an overwhelmed sibling, it plays out like this:

Short: Why'd you paint an owl in our kitchen?  That's where we cook!  I mean, when we cook.  Well, where we're supposed to cook, anyway.
Kinney: I dunno.
Short: What?  I forgot what we were talking about.  Have some McDonald's.

I'm not saying that these actors had a lot to work with, but they sure didn't take advantage of the opportunities they had.

The primary obstacle to this movie's success is the story, which was written by a first-time screenwriter.  Aside from some pretty cliche action moments, I have to wonder just how much thought went into the construction of the armored cars in this movie.  You would think that a real armored car that transfers cash would be pretty secure, right?  Well, not according to Armored.  There are all sorts of ways to mess with these vehicles in the movie.  The alarm is easily disabled without alerting the company base.  They are not on a particular time table, even after picking up money.  The floor of the truck has a thin floorboard that can be disassembled with basic tools.  Sure, the bad guys eventually do the logical thing and go after the door hinges, but those are some suspiciously large hinges for a secure vehicle.  Okay, fine.  Let's say that the armored car problems make sense, or the movie is entertaining enough for that not to not matter.  There is no climax.  None.  There are explosions, and we assume characters die.  Then Matt Dillon shows up and there's a minor showdown, but nothing huge.  I kept expecting another character (Larry Fishburne, I'm looking at you) to show up, partially charbroiled and ready to kill, but the movie just...ends.  Boo!

This movie wasn't incompetent.  It wasn't terrible.  It was mediocre with a bad story.  Its only accomplishment was being a heist movie that I didn't like.

Interesting side note: a Google image search of "Columbus Short glove" comes up with this image.  Why?  I'm so very confused...

Predators

When I learned that Robert Rodriguez was making a new Predator movie, I was pretty excited.  Rodriguez is a guy that knows how to make an amusing action movie that doesn't take itself too seriously (Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, Sin City, etc.), and I think that is exactly what this franchise needs.  Sure, the original Predator was awesome, but let's not look at it with rose-colored glasses; the movie is essentially a live-action G.I. Joe sci-fi flick, drenched in steroids.  Predator 2 wasn't great, and neither were the Alien vs. Predator movies.  Sure, why not make another Predator?  The past twenty years has only dropped expectations for the series, so there's almost no risk and I trust Rodriguez.  What's that?  Rodriguez is only producing this movie, handing over the director's chair to Nimrod Antal?  Oh.  I don't know how I feel about that.

Okay, imagine that you wake up and you are falling.  Not off your bed, but out of an airplane.  What do you do?  Soil yourself?  Well, that's a given.  Don't worry, your parachute will open without your help.  If your next move is to prepare to shoot anything you see, welcome to Predators.  That's pretty much how the film starts, with several people landing confused in a jungle, armed to the teeth.  Royce (Adrien Brody) is a mercenary, Isabelle (Alice Braga) is a sniper, Cuchillo (Danny Trejo) is a Mexican drug cartel enforcer, Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov) is a Russian soldier, Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien) is Yakuza, and Mombasa (Mahershalhashbaz Ali) is an African death dealer.  Heavy hitters, each and every one of them.  There is also Stans (Walton Goggins), a death row inmate with a fondness for cocaine and rape.  And there's Edwin (Topher Grace), a doctor.  If you have "one of these things is not like the other" in your head, you're not alone.  What are the chances that Edwin has a secret?

Opting for strength in numbers in an unfamiliar jungle, an uneasy truce is formed between these hardened killers (and Edwin) and they head to high ground, trying to learn their location.  The initial signs are bad; from personal experience, they acknowledge that they are not in Asia or Africa, which basically leaves the Amazon as the sole likely possibility.  But the sun doesn't seem to be moving and the wind is coming from all directions, neither of which makes any sense.  Oh, but wait...they get to high ground, see a bunch of suns and moons and realize that they are probably not in the Amazon, or even Earth.  That's when the hunt begins.  First, we get some Predadogs (Predator + dogs) chasing the group.

YOU let it lick your face.

These ugly, horned, lion-sized things take a beating and most of the group's ammunition; after the group has killed a few, the Predadogs are called back with the sound of a horn.  Royce realizes that the group is being hunted and decides to hunt the hunters; they follow the Predadog tracks back to the Predator base camp, where they find hundreds of hunting trophies, including many human skulls.  They also find a Predator tied up to a post, presumably for punishment of some kind; this is their first look at the enemy.  Here's a quick rundown on Predators for the uninitiated.  They have:

• dreadlocks, which seems an odd choice for an entire species
• a mouth that looks suspiciously like a female body part, but with pincers
• laser-targeted energy cannons
• cool masks that are often customized with bones and other morbid stuff
• large, retractable knives located in their body armor
• cloaking technology, for near-invisibility
• a fondness for hunting dangerous animals

A little later, they learn even more about the Predators when they encounter Noland (Laurence Fishburne), a man who has survived on Planet Predator alone for quite some time.  After that, it's basically a hunt or be hunted scenario, as the group tries to kill their way to freedom and maybe a way off the planet.

This movie is an interesting blend of stupid and cool.  On the one hand, "Killers From Around the Globe" is a pretty lame theme for the characters, but the cast is varied in appearance and acting skills, so it actually works decently well.  And I was impressed by the order in which the characters died; it was not the typical "least famous dies first" routine.  The title alludes to many things, including the fairly obvious (there is more than one Predator in this movie) and an homage (Predators is what Aliens was to Alien --- or it wants to be, anyway).  The title also refers to the humans, because they are all killers; that last one made me roll my eyes when I heard it mentioned in the movie, but at least its not too pretentious.  We get to see a few different types of Predators in this film, which is an interesting and untapped concept.  We also get Predadogs, which are significantly less cool. 

The acting is about what you would expect from a cast chosen (at least partially) by ethnicity.  Most of the actors have bit parts with little dialogue and no character development.  That's fine.  Movies like this need cannon fodder.  That left the bulk of the acting to Adrien Brody, who did a pretty good job bulking up for the role.  He was a pretty good solider, even if his character was clearly designed to have the illusion of depth --- "Ooh, he quoted Hemmingway!  There's more to this character than we thought!"  Alice Braga was fine as the mandatory conscience of the group, but it was a thankless role and was a little annoying.  Topher Grace's character was obviously designed to have a not-too-subtle secret, but he was still pretty entertaining, especially in the lulls between action scenes.  SPOILER: Okay, so Topher is a serial killer.  Couldn't they have thrown in a red herring, like he's a mercy-killing battlefield doctor, or an abortionist, or something?  Any explanation for his presence on Planet Predator would have been appreciated.  Laurence Fishburne and Walton Goggins also add some spice as clearly unstable people.

Overall, this isn't a bad time.  Nimrod Antal does a solid job directing, even if the plot is occasionally ludicrous and predictable.  The Predators get fleshed out a little more as characters and we see some more of their technology, which is not as interesting as it sounds.  This is definitely the best-acted film in the series (aside from Jesse Ventura in the original), too.  It doesn't quite succeed in matching the awesomeness of the original.  The filmmakers made a big deal about the "s" in the title, and frequently pointed out how James Cameron's Aliens was a very different, but equally awesome, movie than Ridley Scott's Alien.  These guys missed the point of that comparison, though; Alien is a suspense/horror movie, while Aliens is a flat-out action movie.  They are different genres, not just different movies.  Predator is possibly the most testosterone-infused movie ever made, and Predators is a slightly smarter, less muscular version of that.  It's not bad.  It's just playing the same game as the superior original, which makes it somewhat predictable.  That said, I think the door is left open to a truly awesome sequel, so I suppose this film served its purpose of reinvigorating this franchise.