'Armor' (2024) Movie Review

It happens on occasion that two movies with similar plots release on top of one another. There was Armageddon and Deep Impact in the summer of 1998, Dante’s Peak and Volcano in 1997, and November 2024 gave us Aftermath a few weeks ago and now Armor. And talking about these two DTV armored-car-heist-on-a-bridge movies, Armor is not only the lesser of the two, by far, there's nothing of value or interest to find here. Except for die-hard Sylvester Stallone completists.

 

I’m honestly not going to spend much time writing about this because there’s nothing worth talking about, and I am 100% the target audience for this movie. The only reason I am at all is because I’m obligated to. The film starts out lackluster and ends dreary and dire, full of gargantuan leaps in logic, the cheapest plot conveniences, paper thin characters, bland action, thudding, obvious dialogue, a clumsy narrative, and so, so much filler. There’s a scene where we watch two people load a truck for five full minutes. 

 

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The total mess of it all starts to make sense when you read about the behind the scenes goings on. It was shot during the SAG-AFTRA strike, with the union’s approval, and there appears to have been quite a bit of strife on set, reports of people having to fight to be paid, and a number of health and safety concerns. Then there are stories surfacing from set that allege credited director Justin Routt didn’t actually direct anything in the film. However, the accounts of him pretending to shoot scenes, essentially pantomiming the actions of a director according to crew members, are pretty damn hilarious.

 

Perhaps the only positive to Armor is that you can always count on Jason Patric to show up and give it the old college try, regardless of the material, and the material here is dire. (I also feel for the writers, this reeks of a slapdash production where they threw out pages willy nilly.) He plays James Brody, an alcoholic ex-cop who now drives an armored car. James the type of drunk who takes a thermos full of vodka—Chekhov’s thermos full of vodka—to the AA meetings he leads. He works with his son, Casey (Josh Wiggins), who sweats a lot and has a pregnant wife. Those are his defining traits. And wouldn’t you know it, they get hijacked by the most incompetent heist crew you’ve ever seen, led by Rook (Stallone). 

 

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Stallone is in full phone-in mode here. (He supposedly didn’t know a specific producer was involved until he arrived on set, and was not happy about the discovery.) And while Patric and Wiggins do everything they can, they don’t have anything to work with. For his part, Dash Mihok, as one of Rook’s Goons ‘R Us squad, looks like he’s on an all-out meth bender, with bulging, blood-shot eyes, trying to bring an agent of chaos vibe to the proceedings. It’s more exhausting and forced than entertaining unfortunately.

 

If reports that…someone shot Armor in nine days are true (that number has been bandied about, but I couldn’t find any solid confirmation), the fact that it exists at all is a minor miracle. (With all the moving parts, that any movie exists, let alone that some are good, is a miracle in most cases.) Still, that doesn’t mean it’s worth your time and there is nothing to recommend here.