By Sylvester Stallone returns to his action movie roots in Armor, a formulaic bottle film about the battle of wits between a master criminal and the truck driver he tries to rob.
A master criminal (Stallone) earmarks an armored truck as the target of his next heist. The criminal’s team corners the truck, driven by James (Jason Patric) and his fresh-faced son Casey, on a bridge. Using explosives, the criminals trap the injured father and son in the truck’s cargo alongside the money the criminals want.
Armor (2024) – source: Lionsgate
With no way to blow the doors off, the criminal engages in a battle of wits with James, who must use every tool in his arsenal to keep himself and his son out of the hands of the most dangerous men in the country.
A premise as contained as Armor lives and dies by the strength of its character work. And unfortunately, the 1st trailer for Armor offers cliché-ridden stilted writing and one-dimensional characters that don’t indicate the film rising above its logline.
Stallone, in his return to the action genre, looks bored and on autopilot while Patric gets nothing substantial to do beyond making panicked faces. The setting and visual language all seem fairly standard, offering nothing creative to make the film’s contained locations stand out or feel dynamic.
The film feels like a missed opportunity, lacking the rising escalation that many character-based films utilize to keep audiences invested despite the story’s simplicity. It feels…. just low-effort for lack of a better term. While audiences of a certain generation will flock to the theatre for Stallone, Armor currently feels destined to be nothing more than a bargain-bin mainstay.
Directed by Justin Routt, Armor will release theatrically in the US on November 27, 2024. The movie stars Sylvester Stallone and Jason Patric.
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