#59 Armored

I'm not claiming it's art or anything. I watched it for two reasons. I wanted to get some screen grabs for my comic of an armored car. And I was bored.

But as B Movies go, at least this one's trying to be Assault on Precinct 13 era Carpenter instead of Michael Bay or Uwe Boll or something. I'd heard of it in any case because the director is this Hungarian guy who has also done the Predators remake, but I knew him from when my roommate rented Kontrol, this really great Hungarian movie about being a subway fare cop, and thus loathed by most of society. It's kind of like Clerks in Hungarian, but you know, with some great visual sense and some really graphic and chilling scenes of people getting run over by subway trains that still make me look over my shoulder and stand away from the platform edge sometimes.

But anyway, I saw one of his American offerings - Armored.

I just keep going back to the 70s in it. In the best of ways, it does feel like it could have been filmed back then. Stock characters saying cliche class warfare type junk, but over some very well-plotted suspense.

Even the fact that getting signals on the cell phone is drama makes it almost feel like it could have been a forgotten script that someone found in Don Siegel's closet, and someone just threw the cellphone reference in there to update it to modern times, but still keep the hapless would-be criminals out of communication with the outside world while they attempt their misdeeds.

It has a really equilibrium when it comes to the violent actions taken by the crew when they realize that the heist they're attempting has gone way off the rails. The violence isn't glorified. No slo-mo, no minor keys score, no attempts to pretend it has solved anything, but has only created more problems. Nor is it casual and thoughtless. It happens all too easily, but still keeps its weight.

And halfway decent cast: Matt Dillon, Laurence Fishburne, Skeet Ulrich, that guy with the bangs from Heroes, Fred Ward, Jean Reno. All that for roles that mostly consist of a dimension and half, a motivation and a reaction shot? In fact, the ostensible lead is a guy I didn't even recognize, and you surround him with those guys. Interesting call.

Anyway, good for what it was. And sadly, that does mean something these days of Gerard Butler being an action star. Yech.