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...

The Losers

I came of age in the greatest time in film ever: the golden age of body count movies.  In those days (the late 80s-early 90s), the bad guys had evil oozing out of their pores, the good guys could kill hundreds of baddies with nary a scratch (Rambo II and III, I'm looking at you), and there always seemed to be a smart-ass remark after the good guys did something extra cool.  For about five years, these films reigned supreme, from (roughly) Die Hard to The Last Boy Scout (there are outliers to this statistical survey, but let's ignore them for the sake of argument right now).  These movies were always mostly awesome, and always (at least a little) stupid.  After a while, though, people wanted to see more realistic violence on the big screen, and these tributes to testosterone became quite rare in popular film.  That's why The Losers is such a breath of fresh (and familiar) air.  This is a movie that would have felt right at home in 1990.  The bad guy is pure evil, the good guys quip all day long, and there are a lot of dead bad guy underlings by the time this movie ends.

The Losers is a film about five elite Special Forces troops; Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is the man with the plan, Roque (Idris Elba)  is his knife-wielding right hand, Cougar (Oscar Jaenada) is the marksman, Pooch (Columbus Short) is the driver, and Jensen (Chris Evans) is the tech/communications guy.  The movie begins with the team on a relatively easy mission: they need to "paint" a target area for an air strike, basically giving the coordinates to the bombers.  After they give the order to strike, though, a group of children is brought in to the target area for the purpose of being drug mules.  The team tries and fails to cancel the air strike, so they rush in, kill a bunch of bad guys, and rescue the kids, narrowly avoiding the air strike.  When they reach their extraction point, the helicopter waiting for them has only room for the kids or the Losers (which is not a name I heard them referred to in the film, but whatever).  Clay lets the kids take the chopper.  Moments later, the helicopter is blown out of the sky.  Somebody wanted the Losers dead and twenty-five children died instead.  Oops.

After the bombing, the group lies low in Bolivia, trying to figure things out.  Eventually, Aisha (Zoe Saldana) finds them and offers Clay a shot at revenge.  Apparently, the man responsible for the helicopter attack was Max (Jason Patric), an omega-level CIA spook, the kind of guy that topples governments.  Obviously, going to the police won't do any good against such a foe.  The only solution is to kill Max.  For freedom.

No, it's not much of a plot.  That's okay, though.  This movie keeps the action coming early and often, and it's done very well.  There are explosions, sniper shots, car chases, shootouts, and you name it.  You want a body falling to its death from a building?  Puh-leaze.  Give me a real challenge.  Oh, you want a hand-to-hand fight between a man and woman in a fire that doubles as foreplay?  Your wish is granted!

The action would not be so entertaining if not for the cast.  Jason Patric steals the show as the ultra-evil Max.  I normally don't like Patric, but he's mwa-ha-ha evil here and knows it; he's a mass murdering bastard that never justifies himself and clearly likes what he does.  Most bad guys are just bad, but I always welcome the villains that you love to hate, and that is what Patric brings to the table as Max.   Chris Evans is the sarcastic guy he is in most of his movies, but he throws in a lot of uncomfortable comic awkwardness whenever women are involved.  It doesn't quite click, since he's kind of studly and it's hard to believe that his lack of game would prevent him from romantic success, but he still has his moments.  Oscar Jaenada doesn't say much, but his role is to be the quiet bad ass and he does his work well.  Holt McCallany is decent as Max's underling and their conversations make up some of the highlights of the film.  Jeffery Dean Morgan is a likable alpha male, but he's nothing special as Clay.  I like the guy and liked the character, but it's true.  Idris Elba, Zoe Saldana, and Columbus Short don't do anything special, but none of them are bad, either.

Director Sylvain White does a good job keeping this movie moving, whether it be with action sequences or well-executed dialogue scenes.  This is the first movie of his I've seen, but I appreciate the music video quality of his cinematography.  This movie is based on a comic book series of the same name, with one of the primary writers of the TV show Friday Night Lights (Peter Berg) and the writer of The Rundown (James Vanderbilt) handling the adaptation.  I'm not familiar with the comic, so I don't know how well it was written, but this screenplay is pretty dumb.  That's not a problem for me, but consider yourself warned.  Yeah, there are the typical tough guy one-liners sprinkled throughout, but that's not the problem.  The problem is that I'm pretty sure that there are entire pages in the script that call for characters to watch explosions, smile, take a few beats, and then kill some underlings.  Again, I'm okay with that.  It's dumb, not necessarily bad.  What is bad is the basis for this film's conflict; so Max wanted to kill the Losers because...they saved children from an air raid, killing the bad guys he wanted to blow up only moments before their corpses blew up?  That seems silly, at best.

Ultimately, The Losers is a likable action movie that is a lot like ones you've seen before.  The action is good and served often, the characters are shallow but are equipped with sarcasm, and there is a genuinely amusing evildoer.  Yes, the script is a little dumb, the characters are one-dimensional, and you never care what happens to any particular character.  This is a movie that knows what it is and never apologizes.  The only thing that keeps it from joining the elite action movies on Mt. Stupid Bloodfest is the lack of originality.  Since these characters are so shallow, there's really nothing about this movie that makes it memorable.  It's a good time, but not much more.

Whiteout

Whiteout is a heartwarming documentary about the trials and tribulations the emperor penguin must endure to continue their species.  Wait...I'm sorry.  Wrong movie.  This movie is set in Antarctica and is about...people?!?  Oh, no...that can't be good...that means characters will find some excuse to wander around outside, bundled up in parkas, masks, and goggles, making it completely impossible for even the best actor to convey anything except "Brrr!" to the audience.  Only terrible things can come from setting a movie in Antarctica.  Well, that's just common sense.  I'm sure this director knows what he's...crap.  Dominic Sena.  The director of Swordfish and Gone in Sixty Seconds is in charge of putting together an Antarctic movie that isn't terrible?  Dear Hollywood, what were you thinking?  Sincerely, Brian.

Whiteout is a murder mystery set in the frozen tundra of Antarctica.  Well, it's not so much a mystery as it is a process of elimination, since there's (maybe) thirty actors in the whole film.  Kate Beckinsale plays the part of a US Marshall, whose back story the script assumes you want to learn more about.  How should we learn about her?  Colorful dialogue?  Supporting characters talking behind her back?  No, let's use the old repetitive partial flashbacks trick.  That's always a crowd pleaser!  As a viewer, there is nothing I like more than seeing the same flashback over and over again, until the script allows us to see the final little bit that explains why the flashback is supposed to be important.  It's not annoying at all, even when you can summarize the scene with one sentence.

You might be wondering why Kate Beckinsale took this role, since there are neither vampires nor werewolves in the script.  Well, at least not in the final script.  I think she took the role to flex her acting skills, because most of the leading roles she gets have her thrown into skintight leather outfits, bending in pleasing, if surely uncomfortable, directions.  This must seem like a vacation for her.  All parkas, all the time?  Not only does she force attention away from her body and toward her acting, she gets to eat whatever she wants during shooting because nobody looks sexy in a parka.  Of course, the director manages to squeeze in a little T & A at the very beginning, as Beckinsale returns from finding the dead body and decides to take a shower.  I would like to point out that most people would wear warmer undergarments in the Antarctic than she does.  Oh, well.  It's a personal choice.

Sorry, I got sidetracked.  Where was I...?  Oh yeah, the plot.  Well, the movie actually begins with a scene set in the 1950s, aboard a Russian plane.  The plane crashes in Antarctica after the passengers and pilots have a shootout over...well, that's not explained right away.  Instead, we have a murder mystery that somehow involves these moronic Russians.  Seriously, how stupid can they be?  Obviously, there is something valuable on the plane; the camera gazes at one of the passenger's boxes too long for it to be accidental.  There's nothing valuable in Antarctica, and it's nowhere near Russia or any Communist country, so these guys must have brought the valuables from somewhere else and then decided to...what?  Take them to a Russian Antarctic observation station, where they can cash in their valuables for...um...new parkas?  Maybe they were leaving the Russian station, heading to Moscow or something.  But where did the valuables come from?  Maybe they're not going or coming from Antarctica, but are just cutting across it as a shortcut to another Communist country.  Well, that won't work, since none are located in the southern hemisphere.  Like I said: morons.

Obviously, the mystery Russian valuables are the motivation for the murder.  Otherwise, the Russians in the beginning make no damn sense whatsoever.  The only question is who the murderer could be...and whether he is working alone or not.  That gives us only a few people to consider.  Is the murderer Tom Skerritt, Beckinsale's best friend on base and the base's longtime doctor?  Perhaps it is Columbus Short, who acts as a friendly sidekick to this murder mystery.  Well, no, he gets beat up.  Hmm...is it Gabriel Macht, an inspector from the UN whose arrival coincides suspiciously with some of the killer's assaults?  Seriously, I'm pretty sure they would have had a flashing neon sign reading "Suspect" around his neck if they could.  Or is it Alex O'Laughlin, a jerk pilot that can fly himself out of Antarctica if he found, say, something Russian and valuable?

It doesn't matter.  You won't care.  Sure, the plot is a little dumb, and it probably should have omitted the Russian beginning because, let's face it, stumbling across the wreckage of the plane is all we really need to know about how it got there (hint: it crashed).  It's not a fatally stupid premise, though.  The problem is what makes this movie unique: the setting.  The killer is forced to disguise himself in a parka, mask, hood and goggles...just like every character that goes outside in this film.  The wind and snow often buffet the camera, making the characters indistinguishable for the viewers, which makes a chase scene a lot less suspenseful.  When you can't tell which parka has the killer in it, you stop caring pretty quickly.  Speaking of missing the last boat to Suspense Island, both the killer and good guys have to tether themselves to guide ropes when they are outside for safety reasons.  While logical, it seriously limits where the killer and heroes can run to.  "I have to get away from this killer!  ...As long as 'away' is just further down this guide rope."

This movie is just bad.  It's not necessarily the actors' fault, but they don't really help their cause.  The script, taken from a Greg Rucka comic, is dull, at best.  The ending is anticlimactic, although unintentionally funny.  Okay, I'll spoil it for you: Tom Skerritt, the ringleader of everything, is found out, and decides to walk out into the tundra to freeze to death with Beckinsale's approval.  Probably not what her superior wants to read on the official report.  Hilarious.  The real problem is the setting.  In a book, the environment can become a character and really add to a story.  Some movies can make the outdoors absolutely frightening.  This movie just feels a little clammy.