Armor 2024 Movie Review
The recent filmography of Lionsgate is downright fascinating, to say the least, especially when it comes to their action films. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have the beloved golden goose that is the John Wick franchise, which is one of the best, if not the best, action series of the modern era of filmmaking. On the other side of that Continental coin, there are a slew of other so-called action films that ironically lack much of a punch, movies that are quickly forgotten, such as the struggling video game adaptation Borderlands and their ill-fated remake of The Crow.
Unfortunately, Lionsgate’s latest action movie falls into the latter category, with Armor driving at a speed that is well below the genre’s expected speed limit. That’s all despite Armor having one of the genre’s most iconic and recognizable names on board with Sylvester Stallone, who is far from a career slump thanks to his role in hit stories like Tulsa King. Not only do Stallone’s talents as an action star feel wasted here, but Armor also falls into the similar traps that many lower-budget action films typically fall into.
Armor primarily follows James (Jason Patric) – a struggling alcoholic who runs his day-to-day job as an armored truck driver. It’s a thankless job, but at least James’ partner is his son Casey (Josh Wiggins), although the two haven’t been very close since a tragic accident years ago that changed their family forever. James and Casey will need to put their family turmoil aside when a seemingly simple delivery job turns out to be anything but. The father and son duo soon find themselves attacked and cornered on a bridge by a gang of thieves led by a calculated mastermind called Rook (Stallone), and they’ll need to use every trick at their disposal if they want to make it out of here alive.
Being a heist film centered around an armored truck, Armor is somewhat similar in concept to 2009’s Armored, and not just because they have a nearly identical name. However, where Armored at the very least has the intriguing premise of having the armored truck drivers themselves conduct a heist, Armor is running on fumes with a fairly by-the-numbers thriller. The father-son angle does add a little bit of flavor and Jason Patric and Josh Wiggins do have some convincing camaraderie, but the story they’re a part of is frustratingly standard, and it doesn’t help that the villains and threats they’re facing are about as interesting as watching traffic.
Armor’s biggest strength is its lead character, James, and that’s largely thanks to a solid performance from Jason Patric. James is the only character in the film who is given any sort of meaningful development, even if his alcoholic tendencies can be quite cliché and sometimes even downright goofy (such as the way he stores his secret stash of booze in the fridge). Despite the character’s shortcomings, Patric still delivers a more than passable performance as a scared father who is trying to do everything to protect his family.
The same cannot be said for Sylvester Stallone’s Rook, who is about as standard as antagonists get. On one hand, the idea of giving Stallone a true villain role (though Rook does have more of a conscience than his co-conspirators) is a nice change of pace for the action star. Rook, sadly, is far from a compelling antagonist, as we never really learn anything about his motivations beyond wanting money. You know something’s wrong when a character is played by someone as famous as Sylvester Stallone, and yet, it still feels like literally any other actor could play him. You also know something’s wrong when Stallone somehow played a far more interesting antagonist in Spy Kids 3: Game Over.
The rest of Armor’s small supporting cast ranges from passable to sub-par. Josh Wiggins is perfectly acceptable as James’ son Casey, who adds some much-needed levity to Armor’s most self-serious tone. As for the other members of Rook’s crew, they’re all largely disposable and inconsequential goons who are just there to act as cannon fodder for the film’s frankly underwhelming action scenes.
Despite being billed as an action-thriller, the pacing of Armor is about as slow and clunky as the vehicle it’s named after. There’s surprisingly little action in the movie at all, particularly with an incredibly tedious first act that spends way too much time following James and Casey during an average workday. That time could have been spent fleshing out Rook as an antagonist and go deeper into the motivations behind his greedy endeavor, but instead, all we get is James and Casey talking circles around their shared tragic past.
Speaking of that tragic past, there’s an entire flashback sequence in Armor that might be even more ludicrous than the already tough-to-swallow premise of an armored truck stick-up happening on a public roadway. Granted, it’s a road that’s blocked off by construction, but we’d imagine an armored truck going missing for hours would have raised some red flags. The “big reveal” of what occurs to cause Jason and Casey’s estrangement is somehow both incredibly cliché yet unexpectedly goofy all at the same time. While what occurs in this sequence is obviously tragic for the characters, the argument that what happens is one of their faults is a bit far-fetched.
The premise of Armor already isn’t giving the movie too much gas to work with. A solid performance from Jason Patric does give the film a little bit of extra mileage, but weak action and an utter waste of Sylvester Stallone’s talents as both an actor and action star bog the film down in too many issues to count. Where Lionsgate’s other ill-fated action ventures like Borderlands and The Crow might be remembered as examples of what not to do for an action film, Armor may not even be remembered at all.
